GIFT  or 

V 
Sir  Henry   Heyaan 


THE  WORKS'-   :;r'; 


OF 


Charles  Reade 

A    NEW    EDITION     IN    NINE    VOLUIIES 

Illustrated  with  One  Hundred  and  Twelve  Full-Page 
Wood  Engravings 


GOOD    STORIES 

Good    Stories    of    Man    and   Other  Animals 
READIANA 


VOLUME  NINE 


New  York 
PETER    FENELON    COLLIER,   PUBLISHER 


. 


CONTENTS  OF  VOLUME  NINE. 


PAGE 

GOOD   STORIES: 

The  History  of  an  Acre.  5 

The  Knightsbridge  Mystert 9 

slngleheart,  and  doubleface  32 

Tit  for  Tat "JO 

Rus 112 

Born  to  Good  Luck 118 

"  There's  Many  a  Slip  'Twist  the  Cup  and  Lip  " 125 

What  has  Become  of  Lord  Camelford's  Body  ? I3S 

GOOD  STORIES  OF  MAN  AND  OTHER  ANIMALS: 

The  Knight's  Secret 147 

A  Special  Constable 153 

Suspended  Animation 155 

Lambert's  Leap 157 

Man's  Life  Saved  by  Fowls,  and  Woman's  by  a  Pig 158 

Reality 159 

Exchange  of  Animals 166 

The  Two  Leaps 108 

Doubles   178 

The  Jilt— A  Yarn 185 

The  Kindly  Jest 218 

RE ADIAX A 221 


LIST    OF   ILLUSTRATIONS. 

GOOD  STORIES. 

PAGE 

They  took  off  the  handkerchief.     He  had  been  dead  some  time 31 

"I'm  the  master  of  the  house  '' 54 

The  limp  body  and  drooping  head  of  the  true  wife  ^ank  helplessly  against  the 

door  with  a  strange  sound ;•_' 

"  Well,  you  are  a  good  husband  ;  I  must  kiss  you  " ,"2 

He  started  back,  bewildered,  blasted,  terrified,  and  glared  after  her  in  stupid 

dismay 79 

She  with  her  cheek  all  love  and  blushes  on  his  shoulder  99 

GOOD  STORIES  OF  MAN  AND   OTHER  ANIMALS. 

The  dead  monk  chases  the  living 150 

Away  flew  the  cat  through  the  open  window 156 

Man's  life  saved  by  fowls,  and  woman's  by  a  pig 159 

"  A  word,  first,  if  you  please,  sir  " 164 

There  were  piles  and  piles  of  gold  glowing  in  the  sun  175 

He  tore  the  necklace  off  her  neck,  and  dashed  it  to  the  ground 183 

The  ladies  faced  each  other  like  two  young  stags  ready  to  butt  each  other 184 

This  artless  speech,  if  artless  it  was,  brought  the  man  on  his  knees  to  her 187 

Lifted  her  veil  for  one  moment,  and  showed  him  the  face  of  Ellen  ap  Rice 204 

The  next  moment  her  old  lover  was  by  her  side,  untying  her  hair 213 


i)i) 


•>4  }0 


GOOD    STORIES. 


THE   HISTORY  OF   AN   ACRE. 


A.  D.  1616.— The  "Swan  Inn,"  Knights- 
bridge,  with  a  pightle  of  land  and  three 
acres  of  meadow  skirting  Hyde  Park,  was 
leased  by  the  freeholder,  Agmondisham 
Muscamp,  to  Giles  Broncham,  of  Knights- 
bridge,  Winifred  his  wife,  and  Roger  their 
son ;  rent  £30  a  year. 

A.  D.  163-1. —  The  same  freeholder 
leased  the  above  to  Richard  Callawaie 
and  his  son,  for  their  lives;  rent  £30  a 
year. 

A.  D.  1671. — The  above  lease  was  sur- 
rendered, and  a  new  one  granted  to  Rich- 
ard Callawaie,  the  younger,  for  forty-two 
years;  rent  £42. 

October  10  and  20,  A.  D.  1674.— The 
then  freeholder,  William  Muscamp,  Jane 
his  wife,  and  Ambrose,  their  son,  sold  the 
property,  subject  to  Callawaie's  lease  and 
a  mortgage  of  £200,  to  Richard  Portress, 
baker  and  citizen  of  London,  for  £680. 

December  5,  A.'  D.  1674. — Portress  sold 
to  Robert  Cole  for  a  trifling  profit. 

March  17,  A.D.  1682. — Cole  mortgaged 
the  property  to  Squire  Howland,  of  Streat- 
ham,  for  £200,  with  forfeiture  forever  if 
not  redeemed  by  payment  of  £212,  on  or 
before  September  18,  1682.  This  marks 
the  tightness  of  money  in  those  days,  and 
the  high  interest  paid  on  undeniable  secur- 
ity. The  terms  of  the  forfeiture  were  rig- 
orous, and  the  £212  was  not  paid ;  but  the 


mortgagee  showed  forbearance.  He  even 
allowed  Cole  to  divide  the  security,  and 
sell  the  odd  three  acres,  in  1684,  to  Richard 
Callawaie,  for  £180.  For  this  sum  was 
then  conveyed  the  site  of  all  the  buildings 
now  abutting  on  Hyde  Park,  from  the 
"Corner"  to  opposite  Sloane  Street,  and 
including,  inter  alia,  nearly  the  whole  of 
Lord  Rosebery's  site. 

July,  A.  D.  1686.— Nicholas  Burchade, 
goldsmith  and  citizen  of  London,  purchased 
the  "  Swan"  and  pightle  (subject  to  Iveson's 
lease  for  21  years  at  £50  a  year).  He  paid 
to  Howland,  the  patient  mortgagee,  £239 
15s. ;  to  Cole  and  his  wife,  £700. 

But  in  less  than  a  year  he  sold  to  Ed- 
ward Billing,  tobacconist,  for  £602  10s. 

Billing  may  be  assumed  to  have  also 
purchased  Callawaie's  lot,  for  though  no 
negotiation  either  with  Burchade  or  Bill- 
ing is  disclosed  in  the  recitals,  Callawaie's 
interest  in  the  property  disappears  between 
1686  and  1719,  and  the  heirs  of  Billing  are 
found  possessed  of  the  whole  property. 

A.  D.  1701.— Edward  Billing  made  a 
will,  leaving  to  his  wife  the  "Swan"  and 
pightle  for  her  life,  and  this  is  the  first 
document  which  defines  that  property  pre- 
cisely.   . 

July,  A.  D.  1719.— James  Billing,  of 
Boston,  carpenter,  and  Mary  his  wife, 
sold    to    John   Clarke,    baker,    the   entire 


WOEKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


property,  for  £075,  subject   to  Ahae   Bill- 
ing's life-interest  in  the  "Swan." 

Some  years  later,  Anne  Billing  sold  her 
life-interest  to  Clarke  for  £29  10s.  per 
annum. 

John  Clarke  was  the  first  to  take  a  right 
view  of  this  property  and  its  capabilities. 

A.  D.  172'i.— He  granted  a  building 
lease,  for  61  years,  of  the  three  acres, 
ground  rents  £3   per  house. 

His  successor,  Jonathan  Clarke,  fol- 
lowed suit,   and,  in 

A.  D.  1770,  condemned  the  "  Swan."  and 
granted  the  materials,  the  site,  and  the 
pightle,  on  building  lease,  to  Ralph  Mills, 
for  a  much  shorter  time  than  is  general 
nowaday.-,  on  condition  of  bis  building  is 
houses,  one  of  which  to  be  the  freehi 
rent  free,  and  .Mills  paying  £59  a  year  for 
the  other  l  i . 

Now  in  the  will  of  Edward  Billing,  al- 
ready referred  to,  and  dated  1 701,  the 
"Swan"  and  its  messuages,  and  its  pightle, 
are  described  as  "lying  near  the  bridge, 
and  bounded  west  bySir  Hugh  Vaughan's 
lands,  east  by  the  Lazar-cot,  north  by  the 
wall  of  Hyde  Park,  and  south  by  the  King's 
Highway."  I  should  have  called  it  the 
Queen's  Highway,  but  you  must  be  born 
before  yon  can  be  consulted  in  trifles. 
From  ibis  document,  coupled  with  the 
building  lease  of  LI  76,  we  can  tn 
property  to  a  Bquare  foot;  the  back  slum 
now  leading  to  four  houses  called  "High 
Row,"  together  with  those  houses,  covers 
the  area  of  the  old  "Swan  Inn."  The 
lately  called  "Albert  Terrace,"  and 
numbered  correctly,  but  now  called  "  Albert 
Gate,"  and  numbered  prophetically,  are, 
with  their  little  gardens,  the  pightle. 

The  "Swan  Inn,"  condemned  in  1776, 
was  demolished  in  1778,  not  88,  as  the 
guide  books  say.  and  the  houses  rose. 
The  ground  leases  were  not  a  bad  bar- 
gain for  the  builder,  since  in  1791  I  find 
his  tenants  paid  him  £539  a  year;  but  it 
was  an  excellent  one  for  the  freeholder's 
family — the  ground  leases  expired,  and  the 
last  Clarke  enjoyed  both  land  and  houses 
gratis.  The  three  acres  of  meadow  had  got 
into  Chancery,  and  were  dispersed  among 
little  Clarkes  and  devoured  hy  lawyers. 


A.  D.  1830.— The  last  Clarke  died,  and 
left  "  High  Row"  and  the  back  slum,  erst 
the  "Swan  Inn,"  and  the  18  houses  built 
on  the  pightle — in  two  undivided  moieties 
— to  a  Mr.  Franklin,  and  to  his  own  house- 
keeper, Anne  Byford.  Mrs.  Byford  was 
a  worthy,  prudent  woman,  fn  mi  the  County 
Durham,  who  had  put  by  money,  and  kept 
it  in  an  obsolete  chimney  more  mulierum. 
But  now  objecting,  like  most  of  us,  to  an 
undivided  moiety,  she  swept  her  cold  chim- 
ney, and.  with  of  her  solicitor  and 
trusty  friend,  Mr.  Charles  Ilird,  she  bor- 
rowed the  needful,  and  bought  Franklin 
out,  and  became  sole  propriet.  r. 

The  affair  was  not  rosy  at  first:  th< 
leases  were  unexpired,  the  rents  low,  the 
unpaved.  She  has  told  me  her- 
self— for  we  were  lor  year-  on  very  friend1 
ly  terms — that  she  bad  to  trudge  through 
tiie  Blush  and  dirt  to  apply  for  her  quarterlj 
rem-,  and    ..iter,  went    home   crying  at  the 

hostile  reception  or  excuses  she  met,  in 

stead  of    her   modest   dues.      But   sbe   In  Id 

the  site  was  admirable  ; 
no  other  houses  of  this  description  bad 
gardens  running  to  Hyde  Park.  Intelli- 
gence wa>  Bowing  westward.  Men  of  sub- 
stance begm  to  take  up  every  lease  al  a 
pent,  and  to  layout  thousands  of 
pounds  in  improvements. 

Between  L860  and  l  865  ambitious  specu- 
lators sougbt  noble  sites,  especially  for  vast 
hotels;  and  one  fine  day  the  agent  for  an 
enterprising  company  walked  into  the  office 
of  Mrs.  Byford 's  solicitor.  Mr.  Charles 
Hird,  Portland  Chambers.  Tichfield  Street, 
and  offered  five  hundred  thousand  pounds 
for  "High  Row"  and  "Albert  Terrace," 
with  its  gardens. 

Tn  this  offer  the  houses  counted  as  de- 
bris: it  was  an  offer  for  the  site  of  the 
"Swan"  and  pightle,  which  between  1616, 
the  year  of  Skakespeare's  decease,  and  the 
date  of  this  munificent  offer,  had  been  so 
leased  and  re-leased,  and  sold,  and  bandied 
to  and  fro,  generation  after  generation,  for 
an  old  song. 

At  the  date  of  the  above  proposal,  Mrs. 
Byford's  income  from  this  historical  prop- 
erty could  not  have  exceeded  £2,500,  and 
the  bid  was  £20,000  per  annum.     But  a 


THE    HISTORY    OF   AN   ACHE. 


profane  Yorkshireman  once  said  to  me, 
for  my  instruction,  "  Women  are  kittle 
cattle  to  drive ;"  and  so  it  proved  in  this 
y  case.  The  property  was  sacred  in  that 
brave  woman's  heart.  It  had  made  her 
often  sorrowful,  often  glad  and  hopeful. 
She  had  watched  it  grow,  and  looked  to 
see  it  grow  more  and  more.  It  was  her 
child — and  she  declined  half  a  million  of 
money  for  it. 

A  few  years  more,  and  a  new  cutsomer 
stepped  upon  the  scene — ■ 

CUPIDITY. 

A  first-class  builder  had  his  eye  upon 
Albert  Terrace  and  its  pretty  little  gar- 
dens running  to  Hyde  Park.  Said  he  to 
himself :  "  If  I  could  but  get  hold  of  these, 
how  I  would  improve  them!  I'd  pull 
down  these  irregular  houses,  cut  up  the 
gardens,  and  rear  'noble  mansions'  to 
command  Hyde  Park,  and  be  occupied 
by  rank  and  fashion,  not  by  a  scum  of 
artists,  authors,  physicians,  merchants, 
and  mere  ladies  and  gentlemen,  who  pay 
their  rent  and  tradesmen,  but  do  not  drive 
four-in-hand." 

A  circumstance  favored  this  generous 
design :  the  Government  of  the  day  had 
been  petitioned  sore,  by  afflicted  house- 
holders, to  remove  the  barracks  from 
Knightsbridge  to  some  place  with  fewer 
cooks  and  nursemaids  to  be  corrupted  and 
kitchens  pillaged. 

The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  loved 
economy,  and  hated  deficits,  so  this  canny 
builder  earwigged  him.  "If  you,"  said 
he.  "will  give  us  the  present  site  of  the 
condemned  barracks,  and  compulsory  sale 
of  'Albert  Terrace,'  under  a  private  Bill, 
we  will  build  you  new  barracks  for  noth- 
ing on  any  site  you  choose  to  give  us.  It 
will  bejoro  bono  publico." 

This,  as  presented  ex  parte,  was  a  great 
temptation  to  a  public  economist;  and  the 
statesman  inclined  his  ear  to  it. 

The  patriotic  project  leaked  out,  and  set 
the  "Terrace"  in  a  flutter.  After- wit  is 
everybody's  wit;  but  ours  had  been  the 
forethought  to  see  the  value  of  the  sweet- 
est site  in  London  long  before  aristocrats 


and  plutocrats  and  schemers  and  builders ; 
and  were  our  mental  inferiors  to  juggle  us 
out  of  it  on  terms  quite  inadequate  to  us? 

We  held  meetings,  passed  resolutions, 
interested  our  powerful  friends,  and  sent 
a  deputation,  dotted  with  M.P.'s,  to  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 

The  deputation  met  with  rather  a  chill 
reception,  and  at  first  buzzed,  as  deputa- 
tions will,  and  took  weak  ground,  and  got 
laid  on  their  backs  more  than  once;  but 
when  they  urged  that  the  scheme  had  not 
occurred  to  the  Government,  but  had  been 
suggested  by  a  trader — cloaking  lucre  with 
public  spirit — -and  named  the  person,  the 
statesman  lost  his  temper,  and  they  gained 
their  cause.  He  rose  like  a  tower,  and  dis- 
posed of  them  in  one  of  those  curt  sentences 
that  are  often  uttered  by  big  men,  seldom 
by  little  deputations.  "Enough,  gentle- 
men; you  have  said  all  you  can,  and 
much  more  than  you  need  have  said,  or 
ought  to  have  said,  to  me:  you  keep 
yours,   and  we'll  keep  ours." 

Then  he  turned  his  back  on  them,  and 
that  Was  rude,  and  has  all  my  sympathy ; 
for  is  there  a  more  galling,  disgusting, 
unnatural,  intolerable  thing  than  to  be 
forced  by  our  own  bosom  traitors— our 
justice,  our  probity,  our  honor,  and  our 
conscience — to  hear  reason  against  our- 
selves? 

The  deputation  went  one  wa}',  and  baffled 
cupidity  another,  lamenting  the  scarcity  of 
patriotism,  and  the  sacrifice  of  £100,000  to 
such  bugbears  as  Meum  and  Tuum,  and 
respect  for  the  rights  of  the  weak. 

Peace  blessed  the  little  Terrace  for  three 
or  four  years,  and  then 

"  The  mouthing  patriot  with  an  itching  palm," 

rendered  foxier  by  defeat,  attacked  the 
historical  site  with  admirable  craft  and 
plausibility,  and  a  new  ally,  seldom  de- 
feated in  this  country — Flunkyisrn. 

The  first  act  of  the  new- comedy  was 
played  by  architects  and  surveyors.  They 
called  on  us,  and  showed  us  their  plans 
for  building  "noble  mansions"  eleven  sto- 
ries high,  on  the  site  of  our  houses  and 
gardens,  and    hinted    at    a    fair    reniun- 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


eration  if  we  would  consent  and  make 
way  for  our  superiors.  See  Ahab's  first 
proposal  to  Naboth. 

We  declined,  and  tbe  second  act  com- 
menced. Tbe  architects.,  surveyors,  and 
agents  vanished  entirely,  and  the  leading- 
actor  appeared,  with  his  drawn  sword,  a 
private  Bill.  He  was  a  patriot  peer,  whose 
estates  were  in  Yorkshire;  from  that  far 
country  came  this  benevolent  being  to  con- 
fer a  disinterested  boon  on  the  little  village 
of  Knightsbridge. 

The  Bill  was  entitled 

"albert  terrace,  knightsbridge,  im- 
provement ACT." 

It  is  a  masterpiece  in  its  way,  and  very 
instructive  as  a  warning  to  all  public  men 
to  look  keenly  and  distrustfully  below  the 
Surface  of  every  private  Bill. 

The  PREAMBLE  stated  that  the  new  road, 
hereinafter  described,  from  the  high-road. 
Knightsbridge,  into  Hyde  Park,  would  be 
of  great  public  and  local  advantage. 

That  the  Right  Honorable  Henry  Staple- 
ton,  Baron  Beaumont  (hereinafter  called 
the  undertaker),  was  willing  to  construct 
the  said  new  road  at  Ins  own  expense. 
if  authorized  to  acquire  certain  lands, 
buildings,  and   property   for  that    purpose. 

And  that  this  could  not  be  effected  with- 
out the  consent  of  Parliament. 

The  BILL,  amid  a  number  of  colorless 
clauses,  slyly  inserted  that  the  undertaker 
of  this  road  (which  ought  clearly  to  have 
been  a  continuation  of  Sloane  Street  straight 
as  a  bee-line)  might  deviate,  not  eastward 
into  his  own  property  and  justice,  but  west- 
ward, like  a  ram's  horn,  into  the  bulk  of 
Anne  Byford's  houses. 

And  instead  of  asking  for  the  unconsti- 
tutional power  of  compulsory  purchase, 
clause  10  proposed  that  the  power  of 
compulsory  purchase  should  not  be  ex- 
ercised after  three  years  from  the  passing^ 
of  this  Act. 

The  abuse  might  be  forced  on  them. 
Their  only  anxiety  was  to  guard  against 
the  abuse  of  the  abuse. 

Briefly,  a  cannier,  more  innocent-look- 
ing, yet  subtle  and  treacherous,  composi- 


tion never  emanated  from  a  Machiavelian  I 
pen.  — > 

It  offered  something  to  every  class  of 
society :  a  new  public  road  into  the  Park, 
good  for  the  people  and  the  aristocracy ;  a 
few  private  houses  that  stood  in  the  way, 
or  nearly  in  the  way,  of  the  public  road, 
to  be  turned  into  noble  mansions,  good  for 
the  plutocracy  and  the  shopkeepers;  and 
the  projector  a  peer,  good  for  the  national 
flunkyism. 

For  the  first  time  I  was  seriously  alarmed, 
and  prepared  to  fight ;  for  what  says  Syd-  s 
ney  Smith,  tbe  wisest  as  well  as  wittiest 
man  of  his  day?  "Equal  rights  to  un- 
equal possessions,  that  is  what  English- 
men will  come  out  and  light  for." 

I  fired  my  first  shot;  wrote  on  my  front  , 
wall,  in  huge  letters, 

NABOTH-S  VINEYARD. 

The  discharge  produced  a  limited  effect. 
1  bad  assumed  too  hastily  that  all  the 
world  was  familiar  with  that  ancient  his- 
tory of  personal  cupidity  and  spoliation 
jiro  bono  publico,  and  would  apply  it  to 
the  modem  situation,  with  which  it  had 
two  leading  features  in  common.  The  de- 
portment of  my  neighbors  surprised  me. 
They  stopped,  read,  scratched  their  heads, 
and  went  away  bewildered.  I  observed 
their  dumb  play,  and  sent  my  people  to 
catch  their  comments,  if  any.  Alas!  these 
made  it  very  clear  that  Knightsbridge 
thumbs  not  the  archives  of  Samaria. 

One  old  Clo'  smiled  supercilious,  and  we 
always  suspected  him  of  applying  my  text; 
but  it  was  only  suspicion,  and  counterbal- 
anced by  native  naivetej  a  little  tradesman 
was  bustling  eastward  to  make  money,  saw 
the  inscription,  stopped  a  moment,  and  said 
to  his  companion,  "  Nabob's  vinegar !  Why, 
it  looks  like  a  gentleman's  house." 

However,  as  a  Sphinx's  riddle,  set,  by 
a  popular  maniac,  on  a  wall,  it  roused  a 
little  of  that  mysterious  interest  which 
still  waits  upon  the  unknown,  and  awak- 
ened vague  expectation. 

Then  I  prepared  my  petition  to  the 
House,  and   took   grave  objection  to  the 


THE    HISTORY    OF   AN   ACRE. 


9 


Bill,  with  an  obsequious  sobriet}-  as  ficti- 
tious as  the  patriotism  of  the  Bill. 

But  I  consoled  myself  for  this  unnatural 
restraint  by  preparing  a  little  Parliamen- 
tary Bill  of  my  own,  papered  and  printed 
and  indorsed  in  exact  imitation  of  the  other 
Bill,  only  worded  on  the  reverse  principle 
of  calling  things  by  their  right  names. 
The  Bill  was  entitled,  "  Knightsbridge 
Spoliation  Act,"  aud  described  as  follows: 

A  BILL. 

For  other  purposes,  under  pretext  of  a  new 
private  carriage  drive  into  the  Park,  to  be 
called  a  public  road. 

THE     PREAMBLE. 

Whereas  the  sites  of  certain  houses  and 
gardens,  called  Albert  Terrace,  Knights- 
bridge, are  known  to  be  of  great  value 
to  building  speculators,  and  attempts  to 
appropriate  them  have  been  made  from 
time  to  time,  but  have  failed  for  want 
of  the  proper  varnish ;  and  whereas  the 
owners  of  the  said  sites  are  merchants, 
physicians,  authors,  and  commoners,  and 
to  transfer  their  property  by  force  to  a 
speculating  lord  and  his  builders  would 
be  a  great  advantage  to  the  said  specula- 
tors, and  also  of  great  local  advantage — 
to  an  estate  in  Yorkshire. 

And  whereas  the  tradespeople  who  con- 
ceived this  Bill  are  builders,  architects, 
and  agents,  and  their  names  might  lack 
luster,  and  even  rouse  suspicion,  a  noble- 
man, hereinafter  described  as  the  "Pa- 
triot Peer,"  will  represent  the  shop,  and 
is  willing  to  relieve  the  rightful  owners 
of  the  sites  aforenamed,  by  compulsory 
purchase,  and  to  build  flats  one  hundred 
feet  high,  and  let  them  to  flats,  at  £50 
a  room,  and  gain  £200,000  clear  profit, 
provided  he  may  construct  a  new  drive 
into  the  Park  at  the  cost  to  himself  of 
£80,  or  thereabouts,  and  bear  ever  after 
the  style  and  title  of  "the  Patriot  Peer." 

And  since  great  men  no  longer  despoil 
their  neighbors  in  the  name  of  God,  as 
in  the  days  of  King  Ahab  and  Mr. 
Cromwell,  but  in  the  name  of  the  public, 
it  is  expedient  to  dedicate  this  new  car- 
riage drive  to  the  public;  the  said  drive 
not  to  traverse  the  Park,  and  no  cab, 
cart,  or  other  vehicle  such  as  the  public 
uses,  will  be  allowed  to  travel  on  it. 

The  new  drive  and  the  footpaths  together 
shall  be  only  forty-four  feet  wide,  but 
whether  the  foot-paths  shall  be  ten  feet, 


twenty,  or  thirty,  is  to  be  left  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  private  Lawgiver. 
As  this  carriage  drive  of  unlimited  nar- 
rowness is  to  be  used  only  by  the  nar- 
rowest class  in  the  kingdom,  it  shall  be 
dedicated  to  all  classes,  and  this  phrase- 
ology shall  be  often  repeated,  since  re- 
iteration passes  with  many  for  truth. 
The  drive,  during  construction,  to  be 
called  "Patriot's  Road,"  and  when  fin- 
ished, "  Oligarch  Alley,"  or  "Plutocrat 
Lane." 

And  so  on,  with  perfect  justice,  but  a 
bitterness  not  worth  reviving. 

Then  for  once  I  deviated  from  my  habits, 
and  appealed  in  person  to  leading  men  in 
both  Houses,  who  are  accessible  to  me, 
though   I  never  intrude  on  them. 

Finding  me  so  busy,  some  friends  of  the 
measure,  out  of  good  nature,  advised  me 
not  to  waste  my  valuable  time,  and  proved 
to  me  that  it  was  no  use.  Albert  Terrace 
was  an  eyesore  long  recognized :  all  the 
tradespeople  in  the  district,  and  three  hun- 
dred ladies  and  gentlemen  of  distinction, 
dukes,  earls,  marquises,  countesses,  vis- 
countesses, and  ladies,  had  promised  to 
support  the  Bill  with  their  signatures  to 
a  petition. 

Flunkyism  is  mighty  in  this  island.  I 
knew,  I  trembled,  I  persisted. 

I  sounded  the  nearest  Tory  member. 
He  would  not  go  into  the  merits,  but  said 
there  was  a  serious  objection  to  the  Bill 
as  it  stood.  It  would  interfere  with  the 
Queen's  wall. 

Unfortunately  this  was  a  detail  the  pro- 
jectors could  alter,  and  yet  trample  on  such 
comparative  trifles  as  the  law  of  England 
and  the  great  rights  of  little  people. 

Next  I  called  upon  a  Liberal,  my  neigh- 
bor, Sir  Henry  James.  I  had  a  slight 
acquaintance  with  him,  through  his  beat- 
ing me  often  at  whist,  and  always  at 
rapartee,  in  a  certain  club.  I  now  took 
a  mean  revenge  by  begging  him  to  read 
my  papers. 

He  looked  aghast,  and  hoped  they  were 
not  long. 

"Not  so  long  as  your  briefs"  said  I, 
sourly. 

Then  this  master  of  fence  looked  away, 
and  muttered,  as  if  in  soliloquy,  "  I'm  paid 


10 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


for  reading  that  rubbish."  He  added, 
with  a  sigh,  "There!  leave  thern  with 
me." 

The  very  next  morning  he  invited  me  to 
call  on  him,  and  I  found  him  completely 
master  of  the  subject  and  every  detail. 

He  summed  up  by  saying,  kindly: 
"Really  I  don't  wonder  at  your  being 
indignant,  for  it  is  a  purely  private  specu- 
lation,  and  the  mad   is  a   blind.      1  think 

you  can  defeat  it  in   i imittee,  but 

would  cost  you  a  good  deal  (if  money'." 

I  asked  bun  if  it  could  not  be  stopped 
on  the  road  to  committee. 

lb'  said  thai  was  always  difficult  with 
private  bills.  "However,"  said  he,  "if 
the  persons  interested  are  disposed  i"  con- 
fide the  matter  to  me,  I  will  Bee  if  1  can 
do  anj  thing  in  so  clear  a  case" 

You  may  guess  whether  1  jumped  at 
this  or  not. 

A<  a  proof  how  these  private  Bills  are 
smuggled  through  Parliament,  it  turned 
out  thai  the  Bill  in  question  bad  already 
been  read  once,  and  none  of  us  knew  it. 
and  the  sec. md  reading  was  coming  on  in 
a  few  days. 

Sir  Henry  James  lust  no  time  either. 
He    rose    in    the     House,    and     asked     the 

member  for  Chelsea  whether  lie  was  aware 
of  a  Hill  called  Knightsbridge  Improvement 
Acts,  and  had  the  Government  looked  into 
it, 

The  honorable  member  replied  that  they 
had,  and  be  would  go  so  far  as  to  say  did 
not  approve  it. 

"Shall  you  oppose  it?"  asked  Sir  Henry 
James;  and  as  the  other  did  not  reply, 
"Because,  if  not,  we  shall."  He  then 
gave  notice  that  before  this  Bill  was  al- 
lowed to  go  into  committee  be  wished  to 
put  certain  questions  to  the  promoters. 
and  named  next  Thursday. 

Then  I  lent  my  bumble  co-operation  by 
a  letter  to  the    I>"i/i/    Telegraph,  entitled 

"private   bills   and  public  wrongs." 

One  unfair  advantage  of  private  bills  is 
that  their  opponents  can't  get  one-tenth 
part  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  be  there 
and  discuss  them;  so  this  letter  of  mine 


was  intended  as  a  whip  to  secure  a  House 
at  that  early  hour,  when  there  never  is  a 
House,  but  only  a  handful,  chiefly  parti- 
sans of  the  oppressive  measure.  It  had  an 
effect;  there  were  a  good  many  independ- 
ent members  present  when  Sir  Henry 
James  rose  to  question  the  promoters  of 
the  Knightsbridge  Improvement  Bill. 

He  was  met  in  a  way  that  contrasted 
curiously  with  the  advice  I  bad  received, 
no1  to  run  my  bead  against  a  stone  wall, 
with  three  hundred  noble  signatures  writ- 
ten on  it.  A  member  instructed  by  the 
promoters  popped  up  and  anticipated  all 
Sir  James's  questions,  with  one  prudent 
reply, 

"THE    BILL    IS    WITHDRAWN." 

Thus  fell,  by  the  mere  wind  of  a  good 
lawyer's  sword,  that  impregnable  edifice 

of  patriotic  spoliation;  ami  Anne  Byford, 
who  in  this  business  represented  the  vir- 
tues  of   the   nation,    the    self-denial    and 

t Homy    which    purchase   from    a   willing 

vendor,  with  Abraham  for  a  precedent, 
Moses  for  a  guide,  and  the  law  of  En- 
gland for  a  title,  and  the  fortitude  which 
retains  in  lend  times,  till  value  increases, 
and  cupidity  burns  to  reap  where  it  never 
sowed,  was  not  juggled  ou1  of  her  child  for 
nth  pari  of  the  sum  she  bad  refused 
from  a  straightforward  bidder. 

So  much  for  the  pasi  history  of  the 
"Swan"  and  pightle.  There  is  more  to 
come,  and  soon.  The  projectors  of  the 
defeated  Bill  bad  made  large  purchasi  - 
land  (dose  by  Albert  Terrace,  and  this  wa- 
tbrown  upon  their  bands  at  a  heavy  loss 
for  years.  But  now  I  am  happy  to  say 
they  have  sold  it  to  the  Earl  of  Rosebery 
for  £120,000,  so  says  report. 

Even  if  they  have,  what  has  been  will 
be;  in  fifty  years'  time  this  transaction 
will  be  called  buying  the  best  site  in  Lon- 
don for  an  old  song. 

Meantime,  siege  and  blockade  having 
failed,  a  mine  is  due  by  all  the  laws  of  war. 
So  a  new  Metropolitan  Company  proposes 
this  very  year  to  run  under  the  unfortunate 
Terrace, propel  the  trains  with  a  patent  that, 
like  all  recent  patents,  will  often  be  out  of 
order,  and  stop  them  with  another  patent 


THE   KN1GHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


11 


that  will  seldom  be  in  order.  Item,  to 
stifle  and  smash  the  public  a  good  deal 
more  than  they  are  smashed  and  stifled  at 
present  (which  seems  superfluous) ;  the 
motive,  public  spirit,  as  before;  the  in- 
strument, a  private  Bill — Anathema  sit 
in  saicula  sceculorum. 

While  the  moles  are  at  work  below, 
Lord  Rosebery  will  rear  "a  noble  man- 
sion ; "  by  that  expression  every  builder 
and  every  snob  in  London  means  a  pile 
of  stucco,  huge  and  hideous. 

Then  flunkyism  will  say,  "Are  a  peer 
and  his  palace  to  be  shouldered  by  cribs'?" 
and  cupidity  will  demand  a  line  of  "  NOBLE 
mansions,"  and  no  garden,  in  place  of 
Albert  Terrace  and  its  pretty  gardens — a 
rus  in  urbe  a  thousand  times  more  beauti- 
ful and  a  hundred  thousand  times  more 
rare,  whatever  idiots,  snobs,  builders,  and 
beasts  may  think,  than  monotonous  piles 
of  stucco — and  that  engine  of  worse  than 
Oriental  despotism,  the  private  Bill,  will 
be  ready  to  hand.  The  rest  is  in  the  womb 
of  time. 

But  my  pages  are  devoted  to  the  past, 
not  to  the  doubtful  future.  What  I  have 
related  is  the  documentary,  pecuniary,  po- 
litical and  private  history  of  the  "  Swan" 
and  pightle.  Now  many  places  have  a 
long  prosaic  history,  and  a  short  romantic 
one.     The  chronic  history  of  Waterloo  field 


is  to  be  plowed  and  sowed,  and  reaped  and 
mowed :  yet  once  in  a  way  these  acts  of 
husbandly  were  diversified  with  a  great 
battle,  where  hosts  decided  the  fate  of 
empires.  After  that,  agriculture  resumed 
its  sullen  sway,  and  even  heroes  submitted, 
and  fattened  the  field  their  valor  had  glori- 
fied. Second-rate  horses  compete  every 
year  on  Egham  turf,  and  will  while  the 
turf  endures.  But  one  day  the  competing 
horses  on  that  sward  were  a  king  and 
his  barons,  and  they  contended  over  the 
Constitution,  and  the  Cup  was  Magna 
Charta.  This  double  history  belongs  to 
small  places  as  well  as  great,  to  Culloden 
and  Agincourt,  and  to  the  narrow  steps 
leading  from  Berkeley  Street  to  Curzon 
Street,  Mayfair,  down  which,  with  head 
lowered  to  his  saddle-bow,  the  desperate 
Turpin  spurred  his  horse,  with  the  Bow 
Street  runners  on  each  side ;  but  no  man 
ever  did  it  before,  nor  will  again. 

Even  so,  amid  all  these  prosaic  pamph- 
lets and  papers,  leases  and  releases,  mort- 
gages, conveyances,  and  testaments,  ingor- 
ing  so  calmly  every  incident  not  bearing 
on  title,  there  happened  within  the  area 
of  the  "  Swan"  and  its  pightle  a  romantic 
story,  which  I  hope  will  reward  my  friends 
who  have  waded  through  my  prose;  for, 
besides  some  minor  attractions,  it  is  a  tale 
of  blood. 


THE    KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

In  Charles  the  Second's  day  the  "Swan" 
was  denounced  by  the  dramatists  as  a 
house  where  unfaithful  wives  and  mis- 
tresses met  their  gallants. 

But  in  the  next  century,  when  John 
Clarke  was  the  freeholder,  no  special  im- 
putation of  that  sort  rested  on  it :  it  was 


a  country  inn  with  large  stables,  horsed 
the  Brentford  coach,  and  entertained  man 
and  beast  on  journeys  long  or  short.  It 
had  also  permanent  visitors,  especially  in 
summer;  for  it  was  near  London,  and  yet 
a  rural  retreat;  meadows  on  each  side, 
Hyde  Park  at  back,  Knightsbridge  Green 
in  front. 

Among  the  permanent  lodgers  was  Mr. 


12 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Gardiner,  a  substantial  man ;  and  Captain 
Cowen,  a  retired  officer  of  moderate  means, 
had  lately  taken  two  rooms  for  himself 
and  his  son.  Mr.  Gardiner  often  joined 
the  company  in  the  public  room,  but  the 
Cowens  kept   to  themselves  upstairs. 

This  was  soon  noticed  and  resented,  in 
that  age  of  few  books  and  free  converse. 
Some  said,  "Oh,  we  are  not  good  enough 
for  him!"  others  inquired  what  a  half-pay 
captain  had  to  give  himself  airs  about. 
Candor  interposed  and  supplied  the  climax : 
"  Nay,  my  masters,  the  captain  may  be  in 
hiding  from  duns,  or  from  the  runners; 
now  I  think  on't,  the  York  mail  was 
robbed  scarce  a  sennight  before  his  wor- 
ship came  a-hiding  here." 

But  the  landlady's  tongue  ran  the  other 
way.  Her  weight  was  sixteen  stone,  her 
sentiments  were  her  interests,  and  her 
tongue  her  tomakawk.  "'Tis  pity,"  said 
she.  one  day.  "  .-Mine  folk  can't  keep  their 
tongues  from  blackening  of  their  betters. 
The  captain  is  a  civil-spoken  gentleman 
— Lord  send  there  were  more  of  them 
in  these  parts! — as  takes  his  hat  off  to 
me  whenever  lie  meets  me,  and  pays 
his  reckoning  weekly.  If  he  has  a  mind 
to  be  private,  what  business  is  that  of 
yours,  "i-  \ours?  But  curs  must  bark  at 
their   belters." 

Detraction,  tints  roughly  quelled  for  cer- 
tain seconds,  revived  at  intervals  whenever 
Dame  Cust's  broad  back  was  turned.  It 
was  mildly  encountered  one  evening  by 
Gardiner.  "Nay,  good  sirs,"  said  he, 
"you  mistake  the  worthy  captain.  To 
have  fought  at  Blenheim  anil  Malpla- 
quet,  no  man  hath  less  vanity.  'Tis  for 
his  son  he  holds  aloof.  He  guards  the 
youth  like  a  mother,  and  will  not  have 
him  to  hear  our  tap-room  jests.  He  wor- 
ships the  boy — a  sullen  lout,  sirs;  but 
paternal  love  is  blind.  He  told  me  once 
he  had  loved  his  wife  dearly,  and  lost  her 
young,  and  this  was  all  he  had  of  her. 
'And.'  said  he,  'I'd  spill  blood  like  water 
for  him,  my  own  the  first.'  'Then,  sir,' 
says  I.  'I  fear  he  will  give  you  a  sore  heart 
one  day.'  'And  welcome,'  says  my  cap- 
tain, and  his  lace  like  iron.'' 

Somebody  remarked  that  no  man  keeps 


out  of  company  who  is  good  company; 
but  Mr.  Gardiner  parried  that  dogma. 
"  When  young  master  is  abed,  my  neigh- 
bor does  sometimes  invite  me  to  share  a 
bottle;  and  a  sprightlier  companion  I 
would  not  desire.  Such  stories  of  battles, 
and  duels,  and  love  intrigues !" 

"  Now,  there's  an  old  fox  for  you,"  said 
one  approvingly.  It  reconciled  him  to  the 
captain's  decency  to  find  that  it  was  only 
hypocrisy. 

"I  like  not  —  a  man — who  wears — a 
mask,"  hiccoughed  a  hitherto  silent  p< r- 
sonage,  revealing  his  clandestine  drunken- 
ness and  unsuspected  wisdom  at  one  blow. 

These  various  theories  were  still  fer- 
menting in  the  bosom  of  the  "Swan," 
win  n  one  day  there  rode  up  to  the  door 
ous  officer,  hot  from  the  minister's 
Levee,  in  scarlet  and  gold,  with  an  order 
liko  a  starfish  glittering  on  his  breast. 
His  servant,  a  private  soldier,  rode  behind 
him.  and.  slipping  hastily  from  his  sad- 
dle, held  his  master's  horse  while  lie  dis- 
mounted. Just  then  Captain  Cowen  came 
out  for  bis  afternoon  walk,  lie  started, 
and  cried  out.    "Colonel  Barrington!" 

"  Ay.  brother."  cried  the  other,  and  in- 
stantly the  two  officers  embraced,  and  even 
kissed  each  other,  for  that  feminine  cus- 
tom hail  not  yet  retired  across  the  Channel; 
and  these  were  soldiers  who  had  fought 
and  bled  side  by  side,  and  nursed  each 
Other  in  turn;  and  your  true  soldier  does 
not  nurse  by  halves;  his  vigilance  and  ten- 
derness aie  an  example  to  women,  and  he 
rustleth  not. 

Captain  Cowen  invited  Colonel  Barring- 
ton  to  his  room,  and  that  warrior  marched 
down  the  passage  after  him,  single  file, 
with  long  brass  spurs  and  saber  clinking 
at  bis  heels;  and  the  establishment  ducked 
and  smiled,  and  respected  Captain  Cowen 
for  the  reason  we  admire  the  moon. 

Seated  in  Cowen's  room,  the  newcomer 
said,  heartily,  "  Well,  Ned,  I  come  not 
empty-handed.  Here  is  thy  pension  at 
last,"  and  handed  him  a  parchment  with 
a  seal  like  a  poached  egg. 

Cowen  changed  color,  and  thanked  him 
with  an  emotion  he  rarely  betrayed,  and 
gloated  over  the  precious  document.     His 


THE    KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


13 


cast-iron  features  relaxed,  and  he  said,  "  It 
comes  in  the  nick  of  time,  for  now  I  can 
send  my  dear  Jack  to  college." 

This  led  somehow  to  an  exposure  of  his 
affairs.  'He  had  just  one  hundred  and  ten 
pounds  a  year,  derived  from  the  sale  of 
his  commission,  which  he  had  invested, 
at  fifteen  per  cent,  with  a  well-known 
mercantile  house  in  the  City.  "  So  now,'" 
said  he,  "  I  shall  divide  it  all  in  three ; 
Jack  will  want  two  parts  to  live  at  Ox- 
ford, and  I  can  do  well  enough  here  on 
one."  The  rest  of  the  conversation  does 
not  matter,  so  I  dismiss  it  and  Colonel 
Barrington  for  the  time.  A  few  days 
afterward  Jack  went  to  college,  and  Cap- 
tain Cowen  reduced  his  expenses,  and 
dined  at  the  shilling  ordinary,  and  in- 
deed took  all  his  moderate  repasts  in 
public. 

Instead  of  the  severe  and  reserved  char- 
acter he  had  worn  while  his  son  was  with 
him,  he  now  shone  out  a  boon  companion, 
and  sometimes  kept  the  table  in  a  roar  with 
his  marvelous  mimicries  of  all  the  char- 
acters, male  or  female,  that  lived  in  the 
inn  or  frequented  it,  and  sometimes  held 
them  breathless  with  adventures,  dangers, 
intrigues,  in  which  a  leading  part  had  been 
played  by  himself  or  his  friends. 

He  became  quite  a  popular  character, 
except  with  one  or  two  envious  bodies, 
whom  he  eclipsed;  they  revenged  them- 
selves by  saying  it  was  all  braggadocio; 
his  battles  had  been  fought  over  a  bottle, 
and  by  the  fireside. 

The  district  east  and  west  of  Knights- 
bridge  had  long  been  infested  with  foot- 
pads ;  they  robbed  passengers  in  the  coun- 
tr}T  lanes,  which  then  abounded,  and 
sometimes  on  the  king's  highway,  from 
which  those  lanes  offered  an  easy  escape. 

One  moonlight  night  Captain  Cowen 
was  returning  home  alone  from  an  enter- 
tainment at  Fulham,  when  suddenly  the 
air  seemed  to  fill  with  a  woman's  screams 
and  cries.  They  issued  from  a  lane  on 
his  right  hand.  He  whipped  out  his  sword 
and  dashed  down  the  lane.  It  took  a  sud- 
den turn,  and  in  a  moment  he  came  upon 
three  footpads  robbing  and  maltreating  an 
old  gentleman  and  his  wife.     The  old  man's 


sword  lay  at  a  distance,  struck  from  his 
feeble  hand;  the  woman's  tongue  proved 
the  better  weapon,  for  at  least  it  brought 
an  ally. 

The  nearest  robber,  seeing  the  captain 
come  at  him  with  his  drawn  sword  glit- 
tering in  the  moonshine,  fired  hastily  and 
grazed  his  cheek,  and  was  skewered  like 
a  frog  the  next  moment ;  his  cry  of  agony 
mingled  with  two  shouts  of  dismay,  and 
the  other  footpads  fled ;  but,  even  as  they 
turned,  Captain  Cowen's  nimble  blade  en- 
tered the  shoulder  of  one  and  pierced  the 
fleshy  part.  He  escaped,  however,  but 
howling  and  bleeding. 

Captain  Cowen  handed  over  the  lady 
and  gentleman  to  the  people  who  flocked 
to  the  place,  now  the  work  was  done, 
and  the  disabled  robber  to  the  guardians 
of  the  public  peace,  who  arrived  last  of 
all.  He  himself  withdrew  apart  and 
wiped  his  sword  very  carefully  and  mi- 
nutely with  a  white  pocket  handkerchief, 
and  then  retired. 

He  was  so  far  from  parading  his  exploit 
that  he  went  round  by  the  Park  and  let 
himself  into  the  "Swan"  with  his  private 
key,  and  was  going  quietly  to  bed,  when 
the  chambermaid  met  him,  and  up  flew 
her  arms  with  cries  of  dismay.  "  Oh,  cap- 
tain! captain!  Look  at  you — smothered 
in  blood!     I  shall  faint." 

"  Tush !  Silly  wench !"  said  Captain 
Cowen.     "I  am  not  hurt." 

"  Not  hurt,  sir?  And  bleeding  like  a 
pig!     Your  cheek — your  poor  cheek!" 

Captain  Cowen  put  up  his  hand,  and 
found  that  blood  was  really  welling  from 
his  cheek  and  ear. 

He  looked  grave  for  a  moment,  then 
assured  her  it  was  but  a  scratch,  and 
offered  to  convince  her  of  that.  "Bring 
me  some  lukewarm  water,  and  thou  shalt 
be  my  doctor.  But,  Barbara,  prithee  pub- 
lish it  not." 

Next  morning  an  officer  of  justice  in- 
quired after  him  at  the  "Swan,"  and  de- 
manded his  attendance  at  Bow  Street,  at 
two  that  afternoon,  to  give  evidence  against 
the  foot-pads.  This  was  the  very  thing  he 
wished  to  avoid ;  but  there  was  no  evad- 
ing the  summons. 


14 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


The  officer  was  invited  into  the  har  by 
the  landlady,  and  sang  the  gallant  cap- 
tain's exploit  with  his  own  variations. 
The  inn  began  to  ring  with  Co  wen's 
praises.  Indeed  there  was  now  but  one 
detractor  left — the  hostler,  Daniel  Cox,  a 
drunken  fellow  of  sinister  aspect,  who  had 
for  some  time  stared  and  lowered  at  Cap- 
tain Cowen,  and  muttered  mysterious 
things,  doubts  as  to  his  being  a  real 
captain,  etc.,  etc.  Which  incoherent 
murmurs  of  a  muddle-headed  drunkard 
were  not  treated  as  oracular  by  any 
human  creature,  though  the  stable-boy 
once  went  so  far  as  to  say,  "I  sometimes 
almost  thinks  as  how  our  Dan  do  know 
summut;  only  he  don't  rightly  know  what 
ong  o'  being  always  muddled  in 
liquor." 

Cowen,  who  seemed  to  notice  little,  but 
noticed  everything,  had  observed  the  low- 
ering looks  of  this  fellow,  and  felt  he  had 
an  enemy;  it  even  made  him  a  little  un- 
easy, though  he  was  too  proud  and  self- 
possessed  to  show  it. 

With  this  exception,  then,  everybody 
greeted  him  with  hearty  compliments, 
and  he  was  cheered  out  of  the  inn,  march- 
ing to  Bow  Street. 

Daniel  Cox,  who— as  accidents  will  hap- 
pen— was  sober  that  morning,  saw  him  out, 
and  then  put  on  his  own  coat.  "  Take  thou 
charge  of  the  stable,  Sam."  said  he. 

"Why,  where  be'st  going  at  this  timeo' 
day?" 

"  I  be  going  to  Bow  Street, "  said  Daniel, 
doggedly. 

At  Bow  Street  Captain  Cowen  was  re- 
ceived with  great  respect,  and  a  seat  given 
him  by  the  sitting  magistrate  while  some 
minor  cases  were  disposed  of. 

In  due  course  the  highway  robbery  was 
called  and  proved  by  the  parties  who,  un- 
luckily for  the  accused,  had  been  actually 
robbed  before  Cowen  interfered. 

Then  the  oath  was  tendered  to  Cowen : 
he  stood  up  by  the  magistrate's  side  and 
deposed,  with  military  brevity  and  exact- 
ness, to  the  facts  I  have  related,  but  refused 
to  swear  to  the  identity  of  the  individual 
culprit,  who  stood  pale  and  trembling  at 
the  dock. 


The  attorney  for  the  Crown,  after  press- 
ing in  vain,  said,  "  Quite  right,  Captain 
Cowen;  a  witness  cannot  be  too  scrupu- 
lous." 

He  then  called  an  officer  who  had  found 
the  robber  leaning  against  a  railing  faint- 
ing from  loss  of  blood  scarce  a  furlong 
from  the  scene  of  the  robbery  and  wounded 
in  the  shoulder.  That  let  in  Captain 
Cowen 's  evidence,  and  the  culprit  was 
committed  for  trial,  and  soon  after 
peached  upon  his  only  comrade  at  large. 
The  other  lay  in  the  hospital  at  Newgate. 

The  magistrate  complimented  Captain 
Cowen  on  his  conduct  and  his  evidence, 
and  he  went  away  universally  admired. 

Yet  he  was  not  elated,  nor  indeed  con- 
tent. Sitting  by  the  magistrate's  side, 
after  he  had  given  his  evidence,  he  hap- 
pened to  look  all  round  the  court,  and  in 
a  distant  corner  he  saw  the  enormous  mot- 
tled n<>se  anil  sinister  eyes  of  Daniel  Cox 
glaring  at  him  with  a  strange  but  puzzled 
expression. 

Cowen  had  learned  to  read  faces  and  he 
saiil  to  himself,  "What  is  there  in  that 
ruffian's  mind  about  me?  Did  he  know 
me  years  ago?  I  cannot  remember  him. 
< !urse  the  beast — one  would  almost — think 
— he  is  cudgeling  his  drunken  memory. 
I'll  keep  an  eye  on  you." 

lie  went  home  thoughtful  and  discom- 
posed,  because  this  drunkard  glowered  at 
him  so.  The  reception  he  met  with  at  the 
"  Swan"  effaced  the  impression.  He  was 
received  with  acclamations,  and  now  that 
publicity  was  forced  on  him,  he  accepted 
it,  and  reveled  in  popularity. 

About  this  time  he  received  a  letter  from 
his  son,  inclosing  a  notice  from  the  college 
tutor,  speaking  highly  of  his  ability,  good 
conduct,  devotion  to  studj*. 

This  made  the  father  swell  with  loving 
pride. 

Jack  hinted  modestly  that  there  were 
unavoidable  expenses,  and  his  funds  were 
dwindling.  He  inclosed  an  account  that 
showed  how  the  mone}-  went. 

The  father  wrote  back  and  bade  him  be 
easy;  he  should  have  every  farthing  re- 
quired, and  speedily,  "For,"  said  he,  "my 
half-vear's  interest  is  due  now." 


THE   KXIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY 


15 


Two  days  after  he  had  a  letter  from  his 
man  of  business  begging  him  to  call.  He 
went  with  alacrity,  making  sure  his  money 
was  waiting  for  him  as  usual. 

His  lawyer  received  him  very  gravely, 
and  begged  him  to  be  seated.  He  then 
broke  to  him  some  appalling  news.  The 
great  house  of  Brown,  Molyneux  &  Co. 
had  suspended  payments  at  noon  the  day 
before,  and  were  not  expected  to  pay  a 
shilling  in  the  pound.  Captain  Cowen's 
little  fortune  was  gone,  all  but  his  pension 
of  £80  a  year. 

He  sat  like  a  man  turned  to  stone. 
Then  he  clasped  his  hands  with  agony, 
and  uttered  two  words,  no  more — "  My 
son !" 

He  rose  and  left  the  place  like  one  in  a 
dream.  He  got  down  to  Knightsbridge, 
he  hardly  knew  how.  At  the  very  door 
of  the  inn  he  fell  down  in  a  fit.  The 
people  of  the  inn  were  round  him  in  a 
moment,  and  restoratives  freely  supplied. 
His  sturdy  nature  soon  revived,  but,  with 
the  moral  and  physical  shock,  his  lips 
were  slightly  distorted  over  his  clinched 
teeth.     His  face,  too,  was  ashy  pale. 

When  he  came  to  himself  the  first  face 
he  noticed  was  that  of  Daniel  Cox,  eying 
him,  not  with  pity,  but  with  puzzled  cu- 
riosity. Cowen  shuddered  and  closed  his 
own  eyes  to  avoid  this  blighting  glare. 
Then,  without  opening  them,  he  mut- 
tered, "What  has  befallen  me?  I  feel 
no  wound." 

"Laws  forbid,  sir,"  said  the  landlady, 
leaning  over  him.  "Your  honor  did  but 
swoon  for  once,  to  show  you  was  born  of 
a  woman,  and  not  made  of  naught  but 
steel.  Here,  you  gaping  loons  and  sluts, 
help  the  captain  to  his  room  amongst  ye, 
and  then  go  about  your  business." 

This  order  was  promptly  executed,  so 
far  as  assisting  Captain  Cowen  to  rise; 
but  he  was  no  sooner  on  his  feet  than  he 
waved  them  all  from  him  haughtily,  and 
said,  "Let  me  be.  It  is  the  mind;  it  is 
the  mind;"  and  he  smote  his  forehead  in 
despair,  for  now  it  all  came  back  on  him. 

Then  he  rushed  into  the  inn  and  locked 
himself  into  his  room.  Female  curiosity7 
buzzed  about  the  doors,  but  was  not  ad- 


mitted until  he  had  recovered  his  fortitude 
and  formed  a  bitter  resolution  to  defend 
himself  and  his  son  against  all  mankind. 

At  last  there  came  a  timid  tap,  and  a 
mellow  voice  said,  "It  is  only  me,  cap- 
tain.    Prithee  let  me  in." 

He  opened  to  her,  and  there  was  Bar- 
bara with  a  large  tray  and  a  snow-white 
cloth.  She  spread  a  table  deftly,  and  un- 
covered a  roast  capon,  and  uncorked  a  bot- 
tle of  white  port,  talking  all  the  time.  "  The 
mistress  says  you  must  eat  a  bit  and  drink 
this  good  wine  for  her  sake.  Indeed,  sir, 
'twill  do  you  good  after  your  swoon." 
With  many  such  encouraging  words  she 
got  him  to  sit  down  and  eat,  and  then  filled 
his  glass  and  put  it  to  his  lips.  He  could 
not  eat  much,  but  he  drank  the  white  port 
■ — -a  wine  much  prized,  and  purer  than  the 
purple  vintage  of  our  day. 

At  last  came  Barbara's  post-diet.  "  But 
alack!  to  think  of  your  fainting  dead 
away!    Oh,  captain,  what  is  the  trouble?" 

The  tear  was  in  Barbara's  eye,  though 
she  was  the  emissary  of  Dame  Cust's  cu- 
riosity, and  all  curiosity  herself. 

Captain  Cowen,  who  had  been  expecting 
this  question  for  some  time,  replied,  dog- 
gedly, "  I  have  lost  the  best  friend  I  had 
in  the  world." 

"Dear  heart!"  said  Barbara,  and  a  big 
tear  of  sympathy,  that  had  been  gathering 
ever  since  she  entered  the  room,  rolled 
down  her  cheeks. 

She  put  up  a  corner  of  her  apron  to  her 
eyes.  "  Alas,  poor  soul !"  said  she.  "  Ay, 
I  do  know  how  hard  it  is  to  love  and  lose; 
but  bethink  you,  sir,  'tis  the  lot  of  man. 
Our  own  turn  must  come.  And  you  have 
your  son  left  to  thank  God  for,  and  a 
warm  friend  or  two  in  this  place,  thof 
they  be  but  humble." 

"Ay,  good  wench,"  said  the  soldier,  his 
iron  nature  touched  for  a  moment  by  her 
goodness  and  simplicity,  "  and  none  I  value 
more  than  thee.     But  leave  me  awhile." 

The  young  woman's  honest  cheeks  red- 
dened at  the  praise  of  such  a  man.  "  Your 
will's  my  pleasure,  sir,"  said  she,  and  re- 
tired, leaving  the  capon  and  the  wine. 

Any  little  compunction  he  might  have 
at  refusing  his  confidence  to  this  humble 


ir, 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


friend  did  not  trouble  him  long.  He  looked 
on  women  as  leaky  vessels;  and  he  had 
firmly  resolved  not  to  make  his  situation 
worse  by  telling  the  base  world  that  he 
was  poor.  Many  a  hard  rub  had  put  a 
fine  point  on  this  man  of  steel. 

He  glozed  the  matter,  too,  in  his  own 
mind.  "I  told  her  no  lie.  I  have  lost 
my  best  friend,  for  I've  lost  my  money." 

From  that  day  Captain  Cowen  visited 
the  tap-room  no  more,  and,  indeed,  seldom 
went  out  by  daylight.  He  was  all  alone 
now,  for  Mr.  Gardiner  was  gone  to  Wilt- 
shire to  collect  his  rents.  In  his  solitary 
chamber  Cowen  ruminated  his  loss  and 
the  villainy  of  mankind,  and  his  busy 
brain  resolved  scheme  after  scheme  to 
repair  the  impending  ruin  of  his  son's 
prospects.  It  was  there  the  iron  entered 
his  soul.  The  example  of  the  very  tout- 
pads  he  had  baffled  occurred  to  him  in  his 
more  desperate  moments,  but  he  fought  the 
temptation  down;  and  in  duo  course  one  of 
them  was  transported,  and  one  hanged;  the 
other  languished  in  Newgate. 

By-and-by  he  began  to  be  mysteriously 
busy,  and  the  door  always  locked.  No 
clew  was  ever  found  to  his  labors  but  bits 
of  melted  wax  in  the  fender  and  a  tuft  or 
two  of  gray  hair,  and  it  was  naver  discov- 
ered in  Knightsbridge  that  he  often  begged 
in  the  city  at  dusk,  in  a  disguise  so  perfect 
that  a  frequenter  of  the  "  Swan"  once  gave 
him  a  groat.  Thus  did  he  levy  his  tax 
upon  the  stony  place  that  had  undone 
him. 

Instead  of  taking  his  afternoon  walk  as 
heretofore,  he  would  sit  disconsolate  on  the 
seat  of  a  staircase  window  that  looked  into 
the  yard,  and  so  take  the  air  and  sun ;  and 
it  was  owing  to  this  new  habit  he  over- 
heard, one  day,  a  dialogue,  in  which  the 
foggy  voice  of  the  hostler  predominated 
at  first.  He  was  running  down  Captain 
Cowen  to  a  pot-boy.  The  pot-boy  stood 
up  for  him.  That  annoyed  Cox.  He 
spoke  louder  and  louder  the  more  he  was 
opposed,  till  at  last  he  bawled  out :  "  I  tell 
ye  I've  seen  him  a-sitting  by  the  judge, 
and  I've  seen  him  in  the  dock." 

At  these  words  Captain  Cowen  recoiled, 


though  he  was  already  out  of  sight,  and 
his  eye  glittered  like  a  basilisk's. 

But  immediately  a  new  voice  broke  upon 
the  scene,  a  woman's.  "  Thou  foul-mouthed 
knave.  Is  it  for  thee  to  slander  men  of 
worship,  and  give  the  inn  a  bad  name? 
Remember,  I  have  but  to  lift  my  finger  to 
hang  thee,  so  drive  me  not  to't.  Begone 
to  thy  horses  this  moment;  thou  art  not  fit 
to  be  among  Christians.  Begone,  I  say, 
or  it  shall  be  the  worse  for  thee;"  and  she 
drove  him  across  the  yard,  and  followed 
him  up  with  a  current  of  invectives  elo- 
quent even  at  a  distance,  though  the  words 
were  no  longer  distinct:  and  who  should 
this  be  but  the  house-maid,  Barbara  Lamb, 
bo  gentle,  mellow,  and  melodious  before  the 
gentlefolk,  and  especially  her  hero,  Captain 
Cowen  ! 

As  for  Daniel  Cox,  he  cowered,  writhed, 
and  wriggled  away  before  her,  and  slipped 
into  the  stable. 

Captain  Cowen  was  now  soured  by 
trouble,  and  this  persistent  enmity  of  that 
fellow  roused  at  last  a  fixed  and  deadly 
hatred  in  his  mind,  all  the  more  intense 
that  fear  mingled  with  it. 

He  sounded  Karbara;  asked  her  what 
nonsense  that  ruffian  had  been  talking, 
and  what  he  bad  done  that  she  could 
hang  him  for.  But  Barbara  would  not 
say  a  malicious  word  against  a  fellow- 
servant  in  cold  blood.  "I  can  keep  a 
secret,"  said  she.  "  If  he  keeps  his  tongue 
oft'  you,  I'll  keep  mine." 

"  So  be  it,"  said  Cowen.  "  Then  I  warn 
you  I  am  sick  of  his  insolence;  and  drunk- 
ards must  be  taught  not  to  make  enemies 
of  sober  men  nor  fools  of  wise  men."  He 
said  this  so  bitterly  that,  to  soothe  him, 
she  begged  him  not  to  trouble  about  the 
ravings  of  a  sot.  "Dear  heart,"  said  she, 
"nobody  heeds  Dan  Cox." 

Some  days  afterward  she  told  him  that 
Dan  had  been  drinking  harder  than  ever, 
and  wouldn't  trouble  honest  folk  long,  for 
he  had  the  delusions  that  go  before  a  drunk- 
ard's end  :  why,  he  had  told  the  stable-boy 
he  had  seen  a  vision  of  himself  climb  over 
the  garden  wall,  and  enter  the  house  by  the 
back  door.  "  The  poor  wretch  says  be  knew 
himself  by  his  bottle  nose  and  his  cowskin 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


17 


waistcoat,  and,  to  be  sure,  there  is  no  such 
nose  in  the  parish — thank  Heaven  for't ! 
— and  not  many  such  waistcoats."  She 
laughed  heartily,  but  Cowen's  lip  curled 
in  a  venomous  sneer.  He  said :  "  More 
likely  'twas  the  knave  himself.  Look  to 
your  spoons,  if  such  a  face  as  that  walks 
by  night. "  Barbara  turned  grave  directly. 
He  eyed  her  askant,  and  saw  the  random 
shot  had  gone  home. 

Captain  Cowen  now  often  slept  in  the 
City,  alleging  business. 

Mr.  Gardiner  wrote  from  Salisbury, 
ordering  his  room  to  be  ready  and  his 
sheets  well  aired. 

One  afternoon  he  returned  with  a  bag 
and  a  small  valise,  prodigiously  heavy. 
He  had  a  fire  lighted,  though  it  was  a 
tine  autumn,  for  he  was  chilled  with  his 
journey,  and  invited  Captain  Cowen  to 
sup  with  him.  The  latter  consented,  but 
begged  it  might  be  an  early  supper,  as  he 
must  sleep  in  the  City. 

"I  am  sorry  for  that,"  said  Gardiner. 
"  I  have  a  hundred  and  eighty  guineas  in 
that  bag,  and  a  man  could  get  into  my 
room  from  yours." 

"Not  if  you  lock  the  middle  door,"  said 
Cowen.  "But  I  can  leave  you  the  key  of 
my  outer  door,  for  that  matter." 

This  offer  was  accepted ;  but  still  Mr. 
Gardiner  felt  uneasy.  There  had  been 
several  robberies  at  inns,  and  it  was  a 
rainy,  gusty  night.  He  was  depressed 
and  ill  at  ease.  Then  Captain  Cowen 
offered  him  his  pistols,  and  helped  him 
load  them,  two  bullets  in  each.  He  also 
went  and  fetched  him  a  bottle  of  the  best 
port,  and  after  drinking  one  glass  with 
him,  hurried  away,  and  left  his  key  with 
him  for  further  security. 

Mr.  Gardiner,  left  to  himself,  made  up 
a  great  fire  and  drank  a  glass  or  two  of 
the  wine;  it  seemed  remarkably  heady, 
and  raised  his  spirits.  After  all,  it  was 
only  for  one  night:  to-morrow  he  would 
deposit  his  gold  in  the  bank.  He  began 
to  unpack  his  things,  and  put  his  night- 
dress to  the  fire.  But  by-and-by  he  felt 
so  drowsy  that  he  did  but  take  his  coat  off, 
put  his  pistols  under  the  pillow,  and  lay 
down  on  the  bed,  and  fell  fast  asleep. 


That  night  Barbara  Lamb  awoke  twice, 
thinking  each  time  she  heard  doors  open 
and  shut  on  the  floor  below  her. 

But  it  was  a  gusty  night,  and  she  con- 
cluded it  was  most  likely  the  wind.  Still 
a  residue  of  uneasiness  made  her  rise  at 
five  instead  of  six,  and  she  lighted  her 
tinder,  and  came  down  with  a  rush-light. 
She  found  Captain  Cowen's  door  wide 
open.  It  had  been  locked  when  she  went 
to  bed.  That  alarmed  her  greatly.  She 
looked  in.  A  glance  was  enough.  She 
cried,  "Thieves!  thieves!"  and  in  a  mo- 
ment uttered  scream  upon  scream. 

In  an  incredibly  short  time  pale  and 
eager  faces  of  men  and  women  filled  the 
passage. 

Cowen's  room,  being  open,  was  entered 
first.  On  the  floor  lay,  what  Barbara  had 
seen  at  a  glance,  his  portmanteau,  rifled, 
and  the  clothes  scattered  about.  The  door 
of  communication  was  ajar;  they  opened 
it,  and  an  appalling  sight  met  their  eyes: 
Mr.  Gardiner  was  lying  in  a  pool  of  blood, 
and  moaning  feebly.  There  was  little  hope 
of  saving  him.  No  human  body  could  long 
survive  such  a  loss  of  the  vital  fluid.  But 
it  so  happened  there  was  a  country  surgeon 
in  the  house;  he  stanched  the  wounds — 
there  were  three — and  somebody  or  other 
had  the  sense  to  beg  the  victim  to  make 
a  statement.  He  was  unable  at  first ;  but, 
under  powerful  stimulants,  revived  at  last, 
and  showed  a  strong  wish  to  aid  justice  in 
avenging  him.  By  this  time  they  had  got 
a  magistrate  to  attend,  and  he  put  his 
ear  to  the  dying  man's  lips;  but  others 
heard,  so  hushed  was  the  room  and  so 
keen  the  awe  and  curiosity  of  each  pant- 
ing heart. 

"  I  had  gold  in  my  portmanteau,  and 
was  afraid.  I  drank  a  bottle  of  wine 
with  Captain  Cowen,  and  he  left  me.  He 
lent  me  his  key  and  his  pistols.  I  locked 
both  doors.  I  felt  very  sleepy,  and  lay 
down.  When  I  woke,  a  man  was  lean- 
ing over  my  portmanteau.  His  back  was 
toward  me.  I  took  a  pistol,  and  aimed 
steadily.  It  missed  fire.  The  man  turned 
and  sprang  on  me.  I  had  caught  up  a 
knife — one  we  had  for  supper.  I  stabbed 
him   with  all  my  force.       He  wrested  it 


18 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


from  me,  and  I  felt  piercing  blows.  I  am 
slain.     Ay,  I  am  slain." 

"  But  the  man,  sir.  Did  you  not  see  bis 
face  at  all?" 

"  Not  till  be  fell  on  me.  But  then  very 
plainly.     Tbe  moon  shone." 

"Pray  describe  him." 

"Broken  bat." 

"Yes." 

"Hairy  waistcoat." 

"  Yes." 

"  Enormous  n< 

"Do  you  know  him?" 

"Ay — the  hostler,  Cox." 

There  was  a  groan  of  horror  and  a  cry 
for  vengeance. 

"Silence,"  said  the  magistrate.  "Mr. 
Gardiner,  you  arc  a  dying  man.  Words 
may  kill.  Be  careful.  Have  you  any 
doulu 

"  About  what?" 

"Thai  the  villain  was  Daniel  Cox." 

•'  None  whatever." 

At  these  words  the  men  and  women, 
who  were  glaring  with  pale  faces  and  all 
their  senses  strained  at  the  dying  man  and 
his  faint,  yet  terrible,  denunciation,  broke 
into  two  bands;  some  remained  rooted  to 
the  place,  the  rest  hurried,  with  cries  of 
vengeance,  in  search  of  Daniel  Cox.  They 
were  met  in  the  yard  by  two  constables, 
and  rushed  first  to  the  stables,  not  that 
they  hoped  to  find  him  there.  Of  course 
he  had  absconded  with  his  booty. 

The  stable  door  was  ajar.  They  tore  it 
open. 

The  gray  dawn  revealed  Cox  last  asleep 
on  the  straw  in  the  first  empty  stall,  and 
his  bottle  in  the  manger.  His  clothes 
were  bloody,  and  the  man  was  drunk. 
The}'  pulled  him.  cursed  him.  struck  him, 
and  would  have  torn  him  in  pieces,  but 
the  constables  interfered,  set  him  up 
against  the  rail,  like  timber,  and  searched 
bis  bosom,  and  found — a  wound:  then 
turned  all  his  pockets  inside  out,  amid 
great  expectation,  and  found — three  half- 
pence and  the  key  of  the  stable  door. 


CHAPTER  II. 

They  ransacked  tbe  straw  and  all  the 
premises,  and  found — nothing. 

Then,  to  make  him  sober  and  get  some- 
thing out  of  him,  they  pumped  upon  his 
head  till  he  was  very  nearly  choked. 
However,  it  told  on  him.  He  gasped 
for  breath  awhile,  and  rolled  his  eyes, 
and  then  coolly  asked  them  had  they 
found    the    villain. 

They  shock  their  fists  at  him.  "Ay, 
we  have    found  the  villain,  red-handed." 

"  I  mean  him  as  prowls  about  these  parts 
in  my  waistcoat,  and  drove  his  knife  into 
me  last  night — wonder  a  didn't  kill  me 
out  of  hand.  ound  him  amongst 

ye?" 

This  question  met  with  a  volley  of  jeers 
and  execrations,  and  the  constables  pin- 
ioned him,  and  bundled  him  off  in  a  •art 
to  Bow  Street,  to  wait  examination. 

Meantime,  two  Bow  Street  runners  came 
down  with  a  warrant,  and  made  a  careful 
examination  of  the  premises.  The  two  keys 
were  on  the  table.     Mr.  Gardiner's  outer 

door    was    locked.      There    was    no    money 

•  nie  i  in  his  portmanteau  or  Captain 
Cowen's.  Both  pistols  were  found  loaded, 
luit  no  priming  in  the  pan  of  the  one  thai 
lay  on  the  bed;  the  other  was  primed,  hut 
tlie  bullets  were  above  the  powder. 

Bradbury,  one  of  the  runners,  took  par- 
ticular notice  of  all. 

Outside,  blood  was  traced  from  the  stable 
to  the  garden  wall,  and  under  this  wall,  in 
the  grass,  a  bloody  knife  was  found  belong- 
ing to  the  "Swan  Inn."  There  was  one 
knife  less  in  Mr.  Gardiner's  room  than 
had  been  carried  up  to  bis  supper. 

Mr.  Gardiner  lingered  till  noon,  but 
never  spoke  again. 

The  news  spread  swiftly,  and  Captain 
Cowen  came  home  in  the  afternoon,  very 
pale  and  shocked. 

He  had  heard  of  a  robbery  and  murder 
at  the  "Swan,"  and  came  to  know  more. 
The  landlady  told  him  all  that  had  tran- 
spired, and  that  the  villain  Cox  was  in 
prison. 

Cowen  listened  thoughtfully,  and  said, 
"  Cox  1     No  doubt  he  is  a  knave ;  but  mur- 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


19 


der ! — I  should  never  have  suspected  him 
of  that." 

The  landlady  pooh-poohed  his  doubts. 
"  Why,  sir,  the  poor  gentleman  knew 
him,  and  wounded  him  in  self-defense, 
and  the  rogue  was  found  a-bleeding  from 
that  very  wound,  and  my  knife,  as  done 
the  murder,  not  a  stone's  throw  from  him 
as  done  it,  which  it  was  that  Dan  Cox, 
and  he'll  swing  for't,  please  God."  Then 
changing  her  tone,  she  said,  solemnly, 
"You'll   come  and   see  him,    sir?" 

"Yes,"  said  Cowen,  resolutely,  with 
scarce  a  moment's  hesitation. 

The  landlady  led  the  way,  and  took  the 
keys  out  of  her  pocket  and  opened  Cowen's 
door.  "  We  keep  all  locked,"  said  she,  half 
apologetically;  "the  magistrate  bade  us; 
and  everything  as  we  found  it — God  help 
us!  There — look  at  your  portmanteau.  I 
wish  you  may  not  have  been  robbed  as 
well." 

"  No  matter,"  said  he. 

"But  it  matters  to  me,"  said  she,  "for 
the  credit  of  the  house."  Then  she  gave 
him  the  key  of  the  inner  door  and  waved 
her  hand  toward  it,  and  sat  down  and 
began  to  cry. 

Cowen  went  in  and  saw  the  appalling 
sight.  He  returned  quickly,  looking  like 
a  ghost,  and  muttered,  "  This  is  a  terrible 
business." 

"  It  is  a  bad  business  for  me  and  all, " 
said  she.  "  He  have  robbed  you,  too,  I'll 
go  bail." 

Captain  Cowen  examined  his  trunk  care- 
fully. "Nothing  to  speak  of,"  said  he. 
"I've  lost  eight  guineas  and  my  gold 
watch." 

"There!  there!  there!"  cried  the  land- 
lady. 

"  What  does  that  matter,  dame?  He 
has  lost  his  life." 

"Ay,  poor  soul.  But  'twon't  bring  him 
back,  you  being  robbed  and  all.  Was  ever 
such  an  unfortunate  woman?  Murder  and 
robbery  in  my  house!  Travelers  will  shun 
it  like  a  pest-house.  And  the  new  landlord 
he  only  wanted  a  good  excuse  to  take  it 
down  altogether." 

This  was  followed  by  more  sobbing  and 
crying.     Cowen  took  her  downstairs  into 


the  bar  and  comforted  her.  They  had  a 
glass  of  spirits  together,  and  he  encouraged 
the  flow  of  her  egotism,  till  at  last  she  fully 
persuaded  herself  it  was  her  calamity  that 
one  man  was  robbed  and  another  murdered 
in  her  house. 

Cowen,  always  a  favorite,  quite  won 
her  heart  by  falling  into  this  view  of  the 
matter,  and  when  he  told  her  he  must  go 
back  to  the  City  again,  for  he  had  impor- 
tant business,  and  besides  had  no  money 
left,  either  in  his  pockets  or  his  rifled 
valise,  she  encouraged  him  to  go,  and 
said,  kindly,  indeed  it  was  no  place  for 
him  now;  it  was  very  good  of  him  to 
come  back  at  all:  but  both  apartments 
should  be  scoured  and  .made  decent  in  a 
very  few  days,  and  a  new  carpet  down  in 
Mr.  Gardiner's  room. 

So  Cowen  went  back  to  the  City  and  left 
this  notable  woman  to  mop  up  her  murder. 

At  Bow  Street  next  morning,  in  answer 
to  the  evidence  of  his  guilt,  Cox  told  a  tale 
which  the  magistrate  said  was  even  more 
ridiculous  than  most  of  the  stories  unedu- 
cated criminals  get  up  on  such  occasions; 
with  this  single  comment  he  committed 
Cox  for  trial. 

Everybody  was  of  the  magistrate's  opin- 
ion, except  a  single  Bow  Street  runner,  the 
same  who  had  already  examined  the  prem- 
ises. This  man  suspected  Cox,  but  had 
one  qualm  of  doubt,  founded  on  the  place 
where  he  had  discovered  the  knife,  and 
the  circumstance  of  the  blood  being  traced 
from  that  place  to  the  stable,  and  not  from 
the  inn  to  the  stable,  and  on  a  remark  Cox 
had  made  to  him  in  the  cart.  "  I  don't  be- 
long to  the  house.  I  haan't  got  no  keys  to 
go  in  and  out  o'  nights.  And  if  I  took  a 
hatful  of  gold  I'd  be  off  with  it  into  another 
country — wouldn't  you?  Him  as  took  the 
gentleman's  money,  he  knew  where  'twas, 
and  behave  got  it:  I  didn't,  and  I  haan't." 

Bradbury  came  down  to  the  "Swan," 
and  asked  the  landlady  a  question  or  two ; 
she  gave  him  short  answers.  He  then  told 
her  that  he  wished  to  examine  the  wine 
that  had  come  down  from  Mr.  Gardiner's 
room. 

The  landlady  looked  hinL  in  the  face, 


20 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


and  said  it  had  been  drunk  by  the  serv- 
ants, or  thrown  away  long  ago. 

"  I  have  my  doubts  o'  that,"  said  he. 

"And  welcome,"  said  she.     ' 

Then  he  wished  to  examine  the  key- 
holes. "No,"  said  she.  "There  has  been 
prying  enough  into  my  house." 

Said  he,  angrily,  "You  are  obstructing 
justice.     It  is  very  suspicious." 

"It  is  you  that  is  suspicious,  and  a  mis- 
chief-maker into  the  bargain,"  said  she. 
"  How  do  I  know  what  you  might  put  into 
my  wine  and  my  key-holes,  and  say  you 
found  it?  You  are  well  known,  you  Bow 
Street  runners,  for  your  hanky-panky 
tricks.  Have  you  got  a  search-warrant 
to  throw  more  discredit  upon  my  house? 
No?  Then  pack,  and  learn  the  law  before 
you  teach  it  me." 

Bradbury  retired,  bitterly  indignant,  and 
his  indignation  strengthened  his  faint  doubt 
of  Cox's  guilt. 

He  set  a  friend  to  watch  the  "Swan," 
and  he  himself  gave  his  mind  to  the  whole 
case,  and  visited  CV\  in  Newgate  three 
times  before  his  trial. 

The  next  novelty  was  that  legal  assist- 
ance was  provided  for  Cox  by  a  person 
who  expressed  compassion  for  his  poverty 
and  inability  to  defend  himself,  guilty  or 
not  guilty;  and  that  benevolent  person  was 
— Captain  ( !owen. 

In  due  course  Daniel  Cox  was  arraigned 
at  the  bar  of  the  Old   Bailey  for   i 
and  murder. 

The  deposition  of  the  murdered  man  was 
put  in  by  the  Crown,  and  the  witnesses 
sworn  who  heard  it,  and  Captain  Cowen 
was  railed  to  support  a  portion  of  it.  He 
swore  that  he  supped  with  the  deceased, 
and  leaded  one  pistol  for  him  while  Mr. 
Gardiner  leaded  the  ether;  lent  him  the 
key  ef  his  own  door  for  further  security, 
and  himself  slept  in  the  City. 

The  judge  asked  him  where,  and  he 
said,   "13  Farringdon  Street.'' 

It  was  elicited  frcm  him  that  he  had 
provided  counsel  foi    the  prisoner. 

His  evidence  was  very  short  and  to  the 
point.  It  did  not  directly  touch  the  ac- 
cused, and  the  defendant's  counsel,  in 
spite  of  his  client's  eager  desire,  declined 


to  cross  -  examine  Captain  Cowen.  He 
thought  a  hostile  examination  of  so  re- 
spectable a  witness,  who  brought  nothing 
home  to  the  accused,  would  only  raise 
more  indignation  against  his  client. 

The  prosecution  was  strengthened  by  the 
reluctant  evidence  of  Barbara  Lamb.  She 
deposed  that  three  years  ago  Cox  had  been 
detected  by  her  stealing  money  from  a  gen- 
tleman's table  in  the  "  Swan  Inn,"  and  she 
gave  the  details. 

The  judge  asked  her  whether  this  was 
at  night. 

"  No,  my  lord ;  at  about  four  of  the 
clock.  He  is  never  in  the  house  at  night. 
The  mistress  can't  abide  him." 

"  Has  he  any  key  of  the  house?" 

"  Oh,  dear  no,  my  lord." 

The  rest  of  the  evidence  for  the  Crown 
is  virtually  before  the  reader. 

For  the  defense  it  was  proved  that  the 
man  was  found  drunk,  with  no  money  nor 
keys  upon  him,  and  that  the  knife  was 
found  under  the  wall,  and  the  blood  was 
traceable  from  the  wall  to  the  stable. 
Bradbury,  who  proved  this,  tried  to  get 
in  a  1  lent  the  wine,  but  this  was  stopped 
as  irrelevant.  "There  is  only  one  person 
under  suspicion,"  said  the  judge,  rather 
sternly. 

As  counsel  were  not  allowed  in  that  day 
to  make  speeches  to  the  jury,  but  only  to 
examine  and  cross-examine,  and  discuss 
points  of  law,  Daniel  Cox  had  to  speak  on 

his  I  iwn  defense. 

"  My  lord,"  said  he,  "it  was  my  double 
done  it." 

"Your  what?"  asked  my  lord,  a  little 
peevishly. 

"My  double.  There's  a  rogue  prowls 
about  the  'Swan'  at  nights,  which  you 
couldn't  tell  him  from  me.  {Laughter.) 
You  needn't  to  laugh  me  to  the  gallows. 
1  tell  ye  he  have  got  a  nose  like  mine." 
( Laughter,  i 

Clerk  of  Arraigns.  "Keep  silence  in 
the  court,  on  pain  of  imprisonment." 

"  And  he  have  got  a  waistcoat  the  very 
spit  of  mine,  and  a  tumble-down  hat  such 
as  I  do  wear.  I  saw  him  go  by  and  let 
hisself  into  the  'Swan'  with  a  key,  and  I 
told  Sam  Pott  next  morning." 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE   MYSTERY 


21 


Judge.  "  Who  is  Sam  Pott?" 

Culprit.  "  Why,  my  stable-boy,  to  be 
sure." 

Judge.  "Is  he  in  court?" 

Culprit.  "  I  don't  know.  Ay,  there 
he  is." 

Judge.  ''Then  you'd  better  call  him." 

Culprit  (shouting).  "  Hy,  Sam!" 

Sam.   "Here  be  I."  (Loud  laughter.) 

The  judge  explained,  calmly,  that  to 
call  a  witness  meant  to  put  him  in  the 
box  and  swear  him,  and  that  although  it 
was  irregular,  yet  he  should  allow  Pott  to 
be  sworn,  if  it  would  do  the  prisoner  any 
good. 

Prisoner's  counsel  said  he  had  no  wish 
to  swear  Mr.  Pott. 

"Well,  Mr.  Gurney,"  said  the  judge, 
"I  don't  think  he  can  do  you  any  harm." 
Meaning  in  so  desperate  a  case. 

Thereupon  Sam  Pott  was  sworn,  and 
deposed  that  Cox  had  told  him  about  this 
double. 

"When?" 

"Often  and  often." 

"  Before  the  murder?" 

"  Long  afore  that." 

Counsel  for  the  Crown.  "  Did  you 
ever  see  this  double?" 

"Not  I." 

Counsel.  "I  thought  not." 

Daniel  Cox  went  on  to  say  that  on  the 
night  of  the  murder  he  was  up  with  a  sick 
horse,  and  he  saw  his  double  let  himself 
out  of  the  inn  the  back  way  and  then  turn 
round  and  close  the  door  softly,  so  he  slipped 
out  to  meet  him.  But  the  double  saw  him 
and  made  for  the  garden  wall.  He  ran  up 
and  caught  him  with  one  leg  over  the'wall, 
and  seized  a  black  bag  he  was  carrying  off ; 
the  figure  dropped  it,  and  he  heard  a  lot 
of  money  chink;  that  therefore  he  cried 
"Thieves!"  and  seized  the  man;  but  im- 
mediately received  a  blow,  and  lost  his 
senses  for  a  time.  When  he  came  to,  the 
man  and  the  bag  were  both  gone,  and  he 
felt  so  sick  that  he  staggered  to  the  stable 
and  drank  a  pint  of  neat  brandy,  and  he 
remembered  no  more  till  they  pumped  on 
him,  and  told  him  he  had  robbed  and 
murdered  a  gentleman  inside  the  "  Swan 
Inn."     "What  they  can't  tell  me,"  said 


Daniel,  beginning  to  shout,  "is  how  I 
could  know  who  has  got  money  and  who 
haan't  inside  the  'Swan  Inn.'  I  keeps  the 
stables,  not  the  inn ;  and  where  be  my  keys 
to  open  and  shut  the 'Swan?'  I  never  had 
none.  And  where's  the  gentleman's  money? 
'Twas  somebody  in  the  inn  as  done  it,  for 
to  have  the  money,  and  when  you  find  the 
money  you'll  find  the  man." 

The  prosecuting  counsel  ridiculed  this 
defense,  and,  inter  alia,  asked  the  jury 
whether  they  thought  it  was  a  double  the 
witness  Lamb  had  caught  robbing  in  the 
inn  three  years  ago. 

The  judge  summed  up  very  closely,  giv- 
ing the  evidence  of  every  witness.  What 
follows  is  a  mere  synopsis  of  his  charge. 

He  showed  it  was  beyond  doubt  that 
Mr.  Gardiner  returned  to  the  inn  with 
money,  having  collected  his  rents  in  Wilt- 
shire ;  and  this  was  known  in  the  inn,  and 
proved  by  several,  and  might  have  tran- 
spired in  the  yard  or  the  tap-room.  The  un- 
fortunate gentleman  took  Captain  Cowen, 
a  respectable  person,  his  neighbor  in  the 
inn,  into  his  confidence,  and  revealed  his 
uneasiness.  Captain  Cowen  swore  that 
he  supped  with  him,  but  could  not  stay  all 
night,  most  unfortunately.  But  he  en- 
couraged him,  left  him  his  pistols,  and 
helped  him   load  them. 

Then  his  lordship  read  the  dying  man's 
deposition. 

The  person  thus  solemnly  denounced  was 
found  in  the  stable,  bleeding  from  a  recent 
wound,  which  seems  to  connect  him  at  once 
with  the  deed  as  described  by  the  dying 
man. 

"  But  here,"  said  my  lord,  "the  chain  is 
no  longer  perfect.  A  knife,  taken  from 
the  'Swan,'  was  found  under  the  garden 
wall,  and  the  first  traces  of  blood  com- 
menced there,  and  continued  to  the  stable, 
and  were  abundant  on  the  straw  and  on 
the  person  of  the  accused.  This  was 
proved  by  the  constable  and  others.  No 
money  was  found  on  him,  and  no  keys 
that  could  have  opened  any  outer  doors  of 
the  'Swan  Inn.'  The  accused  had,  how- 
ever, three  years  before  been  guilty  of  a 
theft  from  a  gentleman  in  the  inn,  which 
negatives  his  pretense  that  he  always  con- 


22 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


fined  himself  to  the  stables.  It  did  not, 
however,  appear  that,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  theft,  he  had  unlocked  any  doors  or 
possessed  the  means.  The  witness  for  the 
Crown,  Barbara  Lamb,  was  clear  on  that. 

"The  prisoner's  own  solution  of  the 
mystery  was  not  very  credible.  He  said 
he  had  a  double,  or  a  person  wearing  his 
clothes  and  appearance;  and  he  had  seen 
this  person  prowling  about  long  before  the 
murder,  and  had  spoken  of  the  double  to 
one  Pott.  Pott  deposed  that  Cox  had 
•  spoken  of  this  double  more  than  once; 
but  admitted  he  never  saw  the  double 
with  his  own  eyes. 

"This  double,  says  the  accused,  on  the 
fatal  night  let  himself  out  of  the  'Swan 
Inn.*  and  escaped  to  the  garden  wall. 
There  he  (Cox)  came  up  with  this  mys- 
terious person,  and  a  scuffle  ensued,  in 
which  a  bag  was  dropped,  and  gave  the 
sound  of  coin,  and  then  Coz  held  the  man 
and  cried 'Thieves!'  but  presently  received 
a  wound  and  fainted,  and.  on  recovering 
himself,  staggered  to  the  stables  and  drank 
a  pint  of  brandy. 

"The  story  sounds  ridicul> rus,  and  there 
is  no  direct  evidence  to  back  it.  Bui  there 
is  a  circumstance  that  lends  some  color  to 
it.  There  was  one  blood-stained  instru- 
ment, and  no  more,  found  on  the  prem- 
ises, and  that  knife  answers  the  descrip- 
tion given  by  t lie  dying  man,  and  indeed 
may  be  taken  to  be  the  very  knife  missing 
from  his  room,  and  this  knife  was  found 
under  the  garden  wall,  and  there  the 
bl 1  commenced,  and  was  traced  to  the 

stable. 

" Here," said  my  lord,  "to  my  mind,  lies 
the  defense.  Look  at  the  case  on  all  sides, 
gentlemen :  an  undoubted  murder  done  by 
hands;  no  suspicion  resting  on  any  known 
person  but  the  prisoner,  a  man  who  had 
already  robbed  in  the  inn;  a  confident  rec- 
ognition by  one  whose  deposition  is  legal 
evidence,  but  evidence  we  cannot  cross-ex- 
amine, and  a  recognition  by  moonlight  only 
and  in  the  heat  of  a  struggle. 

"  If  on  this  evidence,  weakened  not  a 
little  by  the  position  of  the  knife  and  the 
traces  of  blood,  and  met  by  the  prisoner's 
declaration  which  accords  with  that  sinarle 


branch  of  the  evidence,  you  have  a  doubt, 
it  is  y<mr  duty  to  give  the  prisoner  the  full 
benefit  of  that  doubt,  as  I  have  endeavored 
to  do;  and  if  you  have  no  doubt,  why, 
then  you  have  only  to  support  the  law, 
and  protect  the  lives  of  peaceful  citizens. 
Whoever  has  committed  this  crime,  it  cer- 
tainly is  an  alarming  circumstance  that,  in 
a  public  inn,  surrounded  by  honest  people, 
1  by  locked  doors,  and  armed  with 
pistols,  a  peaceful  citizen  can  be  robbed 
like  this  of  his  money  and  his  life." 

The  jury  saw  a  murder  at  an  inn;  an 
accused  who  had  already  robbed  in  that 
inn.  and  was  denounced  as  Ins  murderer 
by  the  victim.  The  verdict  seemed  to 
them  to  be  Cox,  or  impunity.  They  all 
slept  at  inns.  A  double  they  had  never 
seen;  undetected  accomplices  they  had  all 
heard  of.  They  waited  twenty  minutes, 
and   brought   in  their  verdict — Guilty. 

The  judge  put  on  his  black  cap  and  con- 
demned Daniel  Cox  to  be  hanged  by  the 
neck  till  he  was  dead. 


CHAPTER   III. 

After  the  trial  was  over,  and  the  con- 
demned man  led  back  to  prison  to  await 
his  execution,  Bradbury  went  straight  to 
13  Farringdon  Street,  and  inquired  for 
Captain  Cowen. 

"  No  such  name  here,"  said  the  good 
woman  of  the  house. 

"  But  you  keep  lodgers?" 

"Nay,  we  keep  but  one,  and  he  is  no 
captain,  he  is  a  City  clerk." 

"  Well,  madam,  it  is  not  idle  curiosity, 
I  assure  you ;  but  was  not  the  lodger  be- 
fore him  Captain  Cowen?" 

"  Laws,  no.  It  was  a  parson.  Your 
rakehelly  captains  wouldn't  suit  the  like 
of  us.  'Twas  a  reverend  clerk;  a  grave 
old  gentleman.  He  wasn't  very  well  to 
do.  I  think:  his  cassock  was  worn;  but  he 
paid  his  way." 


THE   KNIOHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


<:■; 


"  Keep  late  hours?" 

"  Not  when  he  was  in  town ;  but  he  had 
a  country  cure." 

"  Then  you  have  let  hirn  in  after  mid- 
night?" 

"  Nay,  I  keep  no  such  hours.  I  lent  him 
a  pass-ke\\  He  came  in  and  out  from  the 
country  when  he  chose.  I  would  have  you 
to  know  he  was  an  old  man,  &nd  a  sober 
man,  and  an  honest  man;  I'd  wager  my 
life  on  that.  And  excuse  me,  sir,  but 
who  be  you,  that  do  catechise  me  so 
about  my  lodgers?" 

"I  am  an  officer,  madam." 

The  simple  woman  turned  pale  and 
clasped  her  hands.  "  An  officer ! "  she 
cried.  "Alack!  what  have  I  done 
now  ?  " 

•'Why,  nothing,  madam,"  said  the 
wily  Bradbury.  "An  officer's  business 
is  to  protect  such  as  you,  not  to  trouble 
you,  for  all  the  world.  There,  now,  I'll 
tell  you  where  the  shoe  pinches.  This 
Captain  Cowen  has  just  sworn  in  a  court 
of  justice  that  he  slept  here  on  the  15th  of 
last  October." 

"  He  never  did,  then.  Our  good  parson 
had  no  acquaintances  in  the  town.  Not 
a  soul  ever  visited  him." 

"  Mother,"  said  a  young  girl,  peeping  in, 
"  I  think  he  knew  somebody  of  that  very 
name.  He  did  ask  me  once  to  post  a  let- 
ter for  him,  and  it  was  to  some  man  of 
worship,  and  the  name  was  Cowen,  yes — 
Cowen  'twas.  I'm  sure  of  it.  By  the 
same  token,  he  never  gave  me  another 
letter,  and  that  made  me  pay  the  more 
attention." 

"Jane,  you  are  too  curious,"  said  the 
mother. 

"  And  I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you, 
my  little  maid,"  said  the  officer,  "  and  also 
to  you,  madam,"  and  so  took  his  leave. 

One  evening,  all  of  a  sudden,  Captain 
Cowen  ordered  a  prime  horse  at  the 
"Swan,"  strapped  his  valise  on  before 
him  and  rode  out  of  the  yard  post-haste ; 
he  went  without  drawing  bridle  to  Clap- 
ham,  and  then  looked  round  him,  and, 
seeing  no  other  horseman  near,  trotted 
gently    round     into    the    Borough,    then 


into  the  City,  and  slept  at  an  inn  in  Hol- 
born.  He  had  bespoken  a  particular  room 
beforehand,  a  little  room  he  frequented. 
He  entered  it  with  an  air  of  anxiety. 
But  this  soon  vanished  after  he  had  ex- 
amined the  floor  carefully.  His  horse  was 
ordered  at  five  o'clock  next  morning.  He 
took  a  glass  of  strong  waters  at  the  door 
to  fortify  his  stomach,  but  breakfasted  at 
Uxbridge  and  fed  his  good  horse.  He 
dined  at  Beaconsfield,  baited  at  Thame, 
and  supped  with  his  son  at  Oxford ;  next 
day  paid  all  the  young  man's  debts,  and 
spent  a  week  with  him. 

His  conduct  was  strange;  boisterously 
gay  and  sullenly  despondent  by  turns. 
During  the  week  came  an  unexpected 
visitor,  General  Sir  Robert  Barrington. 
This  officer  was  going  out  to  America  to 
fill  an  important  office.  He  had  some- 
thing in  view  for  young  Cowen,  and 
came  to  judge  quietly  of  his  capacity. 
But  he  did  not  say  anything  at  that 
time,  for  fear  of  exciting  hopes  he  might 
possibly  disappoint. 

However,  he  was  much  taken  with  the 
young  man.  Oxford  had  polished  him. 
His  modest  reticence,  until  invited  to 
speak,  recommended  him  to  older  men, 
especially  as  his  answers  were  judicious, 
when  invited  to  give  his  opinion.  The 
tutors  also  spoke  very  highly  of  him. 

"You  may  well  love  that  boy,"  said 
General  Barrington  to  the  father. 

"  God  bless  you  for  praising  him !"  said 
the  other.     "Ay,  I  love  him  too  well." 

Soon  after  the  general  left,  Cowen 
changed  some  gold  for  notes  and  took 
his  departure  for  London,  having  first 
sent  word  of  his  return.  He  meant  to 
start  after  breakfast  and  make  one  day 
of  it;  but  he  lingered  with  his  son,  and 
did  not  cross  Magdalen  Bridge  till  one 
o'clock. 

This  time  he  rode  through  Dorchester, 
Benson,  and  Henley,  and  as  it  grew  dark 
resolved  to  sleep  at  Maidenhead. 

J nst  after  Hurley  Bottom,  at  four  cross- 
roads, three  highwaymen  spurred  on  him 
from  right  and  left.  "Your  money  or 
your  life!" 

He  whipped  a  pistol  out  of  his  holster 


24 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


and  pulled  at  the  nearest  head  in  a  mo- 
ment. 

The  pistol  missed  fire.  The  next  mo- 
ment a  blow  from  the  butt-end  of  a  horse- 
pistol  dazed  him,  and  he  was  dragged 
off  his  horse  and  his  valise  emptied  in  a 
minute. 

Before  they  had  done  with  him,  how- 
ever, there  was  a  clatter  of  hoofs,  and  the 
robbers  sprang  to  their  nags  and  galloped 
away  for  the  bare  life  as  a  troop  of  yeo- 
manry rode  up.  The  thing  was  so  com- 
mon the  new-comers  read  the  situation  at 
a  glance,  and  some  of  the  best  mounted 
gave  chase;  the  others  attended  to  Cap- 
tain Cowen,  caught  bis  horse,  strapped  on 
his  valise,  and  took  him  with  them  into 
Maidenhead,  his  head  aching,  his 
sickening  and  raying  by  turns.  All  his 
gold  gone,  nothing  left  but  a  few  one- 
pound  notes  that  he  had  Bewed  into  the 
lining  of  hie 

He  reached  the  "Swan"  next  day  in  a 
state  of  sullen  despair.  "A  curse  is  on 
me,"  he  said.  "My  pistol  misa  tin';  my 
gold  gone ! " 

He  was  welcomed  warmly.  He  stared 
with  surprise.  Barbara  led  the  way  to  his 
old  room,  and  opened  it.  He  started  back. 
"Not  there,"  lie  said,  with  a  shudder. 

"Alack!  captain,  we  kept  it  for  you. 
Sure   you  are  not  af eared." 

"X..."  said  he.  doggedly — "no  hope,  no 
fear."     She  stared,  but  said  nothing. 

He  had  hardly  got  into  the  room  when, 
click,  a  key  was  turned  in  the  door  of  com- 
munication. "  A  traveler  there !"  said  he. 
Then,  bitterly.  "Things  are  soon  forgot- 
ten in  an  inn." 

"Not  by  me,"  said  Barbara,  solemnly. 
"  But  you  know  our  dame,  she  can't  let 
money  go  by  her.  'Tis  our  best  room, 
mostly,  and  nobody  would  use  it  that 
knows  the  place.  He  is  a  stranger.  He 
is  from  the  wars;  will  have  it  he  is 
English,  but  talks  foreign.  He  is  civil 
enough  when  he  is  sober,  but  when  he 
has  got  a  drop  he  does  maunder  away,  to 
be  sure,  and  sing  such  songs  I  never." 

"  How  long  has  he  been  here?"  asked 
Cowen. 

"Five  days,  and  the  mistress  hopes  he 


will  stay  as  man}-  more,  just  to  break  the 
spell." 

"He  can  stay  or  go,"  said  Cowen.  "I 
am  in  no  humor  for  company.  I  have 
been    robbed,    girl." 

"  You  robbed,  sir?  Not  openly,  I  am 
sine." 

"Openly,  but  by  numbers  —  three  of 
them.  I  should  soon  have  sped  one,  but 
my  pistol  snapped  fire  just  like  his.  There, 
leave  me,  girl;  fate  is  against  me  and  a 
curse  upon  me.  Bubbled  out  of  my  fort- 
une in  the  City,  robbed  of  my  gold  upon 
the  road.     To  be  honest  is  to  be  a  fool." 

I  le  flung  himself  on  the  bed  with  a  groan 
of  anguish,  and  the  ready  tears  ran  down 
soft  Barbara  V  eheeks.  She  had  tact,  how- 
ever, in  her  humble  way.  and  did  not  prat- 
tle to  a  strong  man  in  a  moment  of  wild 
distress.  She  just  turned  and  cast  a  lin- 
gering glance  of  pity  on  him.  and  went  to 
fetch  him  food  and  wine.  She  had  often 
seen  an  unhappy  man  the  better  for  eating 
and  drinking. 

When  she  was  -one.  he  Cursed  himself 
for  his  weakness  in  Letting  her  know  his 
misfortunes.  Thej  would  he  all  over  the 
house  soon.  "  Why,  that  fellow  next  door 
must  have  heard  me  bawl  them  out.  I 
have  lost  my  head,"  said  he,  "and  I  never 
needed  it  more." 

Barbara  returned  with  the  cold  powdered 
beef  and  carrots,  and  a  bottle  of  wine  she 
had  paid  for  herself.  She  found  him  sul- 
i  oom posed.  He  made  her  solemnly 
promise  not  to  mention  his  losses.  She  con- 
sented readily,  and  said,  "You  know  I  can 
hold  my  tongue." 

When  he  had  eaten  and  drunk  and  felt 
stronger,  he  resolved  to  put  a  question  to 
her.     "How  about  that  poor  fellow?" 

She  looked  puzzled  a  moment,  then 
turned  pale,  and  said,  solemnly,  "  'Tis 
for  this  daj-  week,  I  hear.  'Twas  to  be 
last  week,  but  the  king  did  respite  him 
for  a  fortnight." 

"  Ah,  indeed  !     Do  you  know  why?" 

"  No,  indeed.  In  his  place,  I'd  rather 
have  been  put  out  of  the  way  at  once,  for 
they  will  surely  hang  him." 

Now  in  our  day  the  respite  is  very  rare; 
a  criminal  is  hanged  or  reprieved.     But 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


35 


at  the  period  of  our  story  men  were  often 
respited  for  short  or  long  periods,  yet 
suffered  at  last.  One  poor  wretch  was 
respited  for  two  years,  yet  executed. 
This  respite,  therefore,  was  nothing  un- 
usual, and  Cowen,  though  he  looked 
thoughtful,  had  no  downright  suspicion 
of  anything  so  serious  to  himself  as  really 
lay  beneath  the  surface  of  this  not  un- 
usual occurrence. 

I  shall,  however,  let  the  reader  know 
more  about  it.  The  judge  in  reporting 
the  case  notified  the  proper  authority  that 
he  desired  his  majesty  to  know  he  was  not 
entirely  at  ease  about  the  verdict.  There 
was  a  lacuna  in  the  evidence  against  this 
prisoner.  He  stated  the  flaw  in  a  very 
few  words,  but  he  did  not  suggest  any 
remedy. 

Now  the  public  clamored  for  the  man's 
execution,  that  travelers  might  be  safe. 
The  king's  adviser  thought  that  if  the 
judge  had  serious  doubts  it  was  his  busi- 
ness to  tell  the  jury  so.  The  order  for  exe- 
cution issued. 

Three  days  after  this  the  judge  received 
a  letter  from  Bardbury,  which  I  give  ver- 
batim : 

The  King  v.   Cox. 

"  My  Lord  —  Forgive  my  writing  to 
you  in  a  case  of  blood.  There  is  no  other 
wa}T.  Daniel  Cox  was  not  defended.  Coun- 
sel went  against  his  wish,  and  would  not 
throw  suspicion  on  any  other.  That  made 
it  Cox  or  nobody.  But  there  was  a  man 
in  the  inn  whose  conduct  was  suspicious. 
He  furnished  the  wine  that  made  the  vic- 
tim sleepy — and  I  must  tell  you  the  land- 
lady would  not  let  me  see  the  remnant  of 
the  wine;  she  did  everything  to  baffle  me 
and  defeat  justice — be  loaded  two  pistols 
so  that  neither  could  go  off.  He  has  got 
a  pass-ke}7,  and  goes  in  and  out  of  the 
'Swan'  at  all  hours.  He  provided  coun- 
sel for  Daniel  Cox.  That  could  only  be 
through  compunction. 

"  He  swore  in  court  that  he  slept  that 
night  at  13  Farringdon  Street.  Your 
lordship  will  find  it  on  your  notes.  For 
'twas  you  put  the  question,  and  methinkb 
Heaven  inspired  you.     An  hour  after  the 


trial  I  was  at  13  Farringdon  Street.  No 
Cowen  and  no  captain  had  ever  lodged 
there  nor  slept  there.  Present  lodger,  a 
City  clerk;  lodger  at  date  of  murder,  an 
old  clergyman  that  said  he  had  a  country 
cure,  and  got  the  simple  body  to  trust  him 
with  a  pass-key — so  he  came  in  and  out  at 
all  hours  of  the  night.  This  man  was  no 
clerk,  but,  as  I  believe,  the  cracksman  that 
did  the  job  at  the  'Swan.' 

"  My  lord,  there  is  always  two  in  a  job 
of  this  sort— the  professional  man  and  the 
confederate.  Cowen  was  the  confederate, 
hocussed  the  wine,  loaded  the  pistols,  and 
lent  his  pass-key  to  the  cracksman.  The 
cracksman  opened  the  other  door  with  his 
tools,  unless  Cowen  made  him  duplicate 
keys.  Neither  of  them  intended  violence, 
or  they  would  have  used  their  own  weapons. 
The  wine  was  drugged  expressly  to  make 
that  needless.  The  cracksman,  instead  of 
a  black  mask,  put  on  a  calf-skin  waistcoat 
and  a  bottle  nose,  and  that  passed  muster 
for  Cox  by  moonlight ;  it  puzzled  Cox  by 
moonlight,  and  deceived  Gardiner  by 
moonlight. 

"  For  the  love  of  God  get  me  a  respite 
for  the  innocent  man,  and  I  will  undertake 
to  bring  the  crime  home  to  the  cracksman 
and  to  his  confederate,  Cowen." 

Bradbury  signed  this  with  his  name  and 
quality. 

The  judge  was  not  sorry  to  see  the  doubt 
his  own  wariness  had  raised  so  powerfully 
confirmed.  He  sent  this  missive  on  to  the 
minister,  with  the  remark  that  he  had  re- 
ceived a  letter  which  ought  not  to  have 
been  sent  to  him,  but  to  those  in  whose 
hands  the  prisoner's  fate  rested.  He 
thought  it  his  duty,  however,  to  tran- 
scribe from  his  notes  the  question  he  had 
put  to  Captain  Cowen,  and  his  reply  that 
he  had  slept  at  13  Farringdon  Street  on 
the  night  of  the  murder,  and  also  the 
substance  of  the  prisoner's  defense,  with 
the  remark  that,  as  stated  by  that  unedu- 
cated person,  it  had  appeared  ridiculous; 
but  that,  after  studying  this  Bow  Street 
officer's  statements,  and  assuming  them 
to  be  in  the  main  correct,  it  did  not  ap- 
pear ridiculous,  but  only  remarkable,  and 


26 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


it  reconciled  all  the  undisputed  facts, 
whereas  that  Cox  was  the  murderer  was 
and  ever  must  remain  irreconcilable  with 
the  position  of  the  knife  and  the  track  of 
the  blood. 

Bradbury's  letter  and  the  above  com- 
ment found  their  way  to  the  king,  and 
he  granted  what  was  asked — a  respite. 

Bradbury  and  his  fellows  went  to  work 
to  find  the  old  clergyman,  alias  cracks- 
man, but  he  had  melted  away  without  a 
trace,  and  they  got  no  other  clew.  But 
during  Co  wen's  absence  they  got  a  traveler, 
i.e.,  a  disguised  agent,  into  the  inn,  who 
found  relics  of  wax  in  the  key-holes  of 
Cowen's  outer  door  and  of  the  door  of 
communication. 

Bradbury  sent  this  information  in  two 
.  one  to  the  judge,  and  oni'  to  the 
minister. 

But  this  did  not  advance  bim  much. 
He  had  lung  been  sure  thai  Cowen  wa- 
in it.  It  was  the  professional  hand,  the 
actual  robber  and  murderer  he  wanted. 

The  da.ys  succeeded  one  another:  noth- 
ing was  done.  He  lamented,  too  late,  he 
bad  not  applied  for  a  reprieve,  or  even  a 
pardon.  I  [e  deplored  bis  own  presumption 
in  assuming  that  he  could  unravel  such  a 
mystery  entirely.  His  busy  brain  schemed 
night  and  day;  he  lost  bis  sleep,  and  even 
his  appetite.  At  last,  in  sheer  despair,  he 
proposed  to  himself  a  new  solution,  and 
acted  upon  it  in  the  dark  and  with  con- 
summate subtlety;  for  he  said  to  himself, 
••  I  am  in  deeper  water  than  I  thought. 
Lord,  how  they  skim  a  case  at  the  Old 
Bailey!  They  take  a  pond  for  a  puddle, 
and  go  to  fathom   it  with  a   forefinger." 

Captain  Cowen  sank  into  a  settled 
gloom,  but  he  no  longer  courted  solitude ; 
it  gave  him  the  horrors.  He  preferred  to 
be  in  company,  though  he  no  longer  shone 
in  it.  He  made  acquaintance  with  his 
neighbor,  and  rather  liked  him.  The 
man  had  been  in  the  Commissariat  De- 
partment, and  seemed  half  surprised  at 
the  honor  a  captain  did  him  in  convers- 
ing with  him.  But  he  was  well  versed 
in  all  the  incidents  of  the  late  wars,  and 
Cowen  was  glad  to  go  with  him   into  the 


past;  for  the  present  was  dead,  and  the 
future  horrible. 

This  Mr.  Cutler,  so  deferential  when 
sober,  was  inclined  to  be  more  familiar 
when  in  his  cups,  and  that  generally  ended 
in  his  singing  and  talking  to  himself  in 
bis  own  room  in  the  absurdest  way.  He 
never  went  out  without  a  black  leather 
case  strapped  across  his  back  like  a  dis- 
patch-box. When  joked  and  asked  as  to 
the  contents,  he  used  to  say,  •■Papers, 
papers,"  curtly. 

One  evening,  being  rather  the  worse  for 
liquor,  he  dropped  it,  and  there  was  a 
metallic  sound.  This  was  immediately 
commented  on  by  the  wags  of  the  oom- 
pany. 

"That  fell  heavy  for  paper,"  said  one. 

"  And  there  was  a  ring,"  said  another. 

"Come,  unload  thy  pack,  comrade,  and 
show  us  thy  pa] 
Cutler  was  sobered  in  a  moment,  and 

looked   scaled.      Cowen  observed  this,  and 

quietly  left  the  room.  He  went  upstairs 
to  his  own  room,  and,  mounting  on  a 
chair,  he  found  a  thin  place  in  the  parti- 
tion, and  made  an  eyelet  hole. 

Thatverj  night  be  made  use  of  this  with 
good  effect.  Cutler  came  up  to  bei  I 
ing  and  whistling,  but  presently  threw 
down  something  heavy,  and  was  silent. 
Cowen  spied,  and  saw  him  kneel  down, 
draw  from  his  bosom  a  key  suspended 
round  his  neck  by  a  ribbon,  and  open 
the  dispatch-box.  There  were  papers  in 
it.  but  only  to  deaden  the  sound  of  a  great 
many  new  guineas  that  glittered  in  the 
light  of  the  candle,  and  seemed  to  fire  and 
fill  the  receptacle- 
Cutler  looked  furtively  round,  plunged 
his  hands  in  them,  took  them  out  by 
handfuls,  admired  them,  kissed  them, 
and  seemed  to  worship  them,  locked  them 
up  again,  and  put  the  black  case  under 
his  pillow. 

While  they  were  glaring  in  the  light, 
Cowen's  eyes  flashed  with  unholy  fire. 
He  clutched  his  hands  at  them  where  he 
stood,  but  they  were  inaccessible.  He  sat 
down  despondent  and  cursed  the  injustice 
of  fate.  Bubbled  out  of  money  in  the  City ; 
robbed  on  the  road :  but  when  another  had 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


27 


money  it  was  safe ;  he  left  his  keys  in  the 
locks  of  both  doors,  and  his  gold  never 
quitted  him. 

Not  long  after  this  discovery  he  got  a 
letter  from  his  son,  telling  him  that  the 
college  bill  for  battels,  or  commons,  had 
come  in,  and  he  was  unable  to  pay  it;  he 
begged  his  father  to  disburse  it  or  he  should 
lose  credit. 

This  tormented  the  unhappy  father,  and 
the  proximity  of  gold  tantalized  him,  so 
that  he  bought  a  phial  of  laudanum  and 
secreted  it  about  his  person. 

"Better  die,"  said  he,  "and  leave  my 
boy  to  Barrington.  Such  a  legacy  from 
his  dead  comrade  will  be  sacred,  and  he 
has  the  world  at  his  feet." 

He  even  ordered  a  bottle  of  red  port,  and 
kept  it  by  him  to  swill  the  laudanum  in, 
and  so  get  drunk  and  die. 

But  when  it  came  to  the  point  he  fal- 
tered. 

Meantime  the  day  drew  near  for  the 
execution  of  Daniel  Cox.  Bradbury  had 
undertaken  too  much.  His  cracksman 
seemed,  to  the  king's  advisers,  as  shadowy 
as  the  double  of  Daniel  Cox. 

The  evening  before  that  fatal  day  Co  wen 
came  to  a  wild  resolution.  He  would  go 
to  Tyburn  at  noon,  which  was  the  hour 
fixed,  and  would  die  under  that  man's 
gibbet.  So  was  this  powerful  mind  un- 
hinged. 

This  desperate  idea  was  uppermost  in 
his  mind  when  he  went  up  to  his  bed- 
room. 

But  he  resisted.  No,  he  would  never 
play  the  coward  while  there  was  a  chance 
left  on  the  cards.  While  there  is  life  there 
is  hope.  He  seized  the  bottle,  uncorked  it, 
and  tossed  off  a  glass.  It  was  potent,  and 
tingled  through  his  veins  and  warmed  his 
heart. 

He  set  the  bottle  down  before  him.  He 
filled  another  glass.  But  before  he  put  it  to 
his  lips  jocund  noises  were  heard  coming  up 
the  stairs,  and  noisy,  drunken  voices,  and 
two  boon  companions  of  his  neighbor  Cut- 
ler, who  had  a  double-bedded  room  oppo- 
site him,  parted  with  him  for  the  night. 
He  was  not  drunk  enough,  it  seems,  for  he 
kept  demanding  t'other  bottle.  His  friends, 


however,  were  of  a  different  opinion ;  they 
bundled  him  into  his  room  and  locked  him 
in  from  the  other  side ;  and  shortly  after 
burst  into  their  own  room,  and  were  more 
garrulous  than  articulate. 

Cutler,  thus  disposed  of,  kept  saying,  and 
shouting,  and  whining  that  he  must  have 
t'other  bottle.  In  short,  any  one  at  a  dis- 
tance would  have  thought  he  was  announc- 
ing sixteen  different  propositions,  so  vari- 
ous were  the  accents  of  anger,  grief, 
expostulation,  deprecation,  supplication, 
imprecation,  and  whining  tenderness  in 
which  he  declared  he  must  have  t'other 
bo'l. 

At  last  he  came  bump  against  the  door 
of  communication.  "Neighbor,"  said  he, 
"your  wuship,  I  mean  great  man  of 
war." 

"Well,  sir?" 

"  Let's  have  t'other  bo'l." 

Cowen's  eyes  flashed.  He  took  out  his 
phial  of  laudanum,  and  emptied  about  a 
fifth  part  of  it  into  the  bottle. 

Cutler  whined  at  the  door,  "  Do  open  the 
door,  your  wuship,  and  let's  have  t'other 
(hie)." 

"  Why,  the  key  is  on  your  side." 

A  feeble-minded  laugh  at  the  discovery, 
a  fumbling  with  the  key,  and  the  door 
opened,  and  Cutler  stood  in  the  doorway, 
with  his  cravat  disgracefully  loose  and  his 
visage  wreathed  in  foolish  smiles.  His  eyes 
goggled ;  he  pointed  with  a  mixture  of  sur- 
prise and  low  cunning  at  the  table :  "  Why, 
there  is  t'other  bo'l;  let's  have'm." 

"Nay,"  said  Cowen,  "I  drain  no  bottles 
at  this  time.  One  glass  suffices  me.  I 
drink  your  health."     He  raised  his  glass. 

Cutler  grabbed  the  bottle,  and  said, 
brutally,  "And  I'll  drink  yours,"  and 
shut  the  door  with  a  slam,  but  was  too 
intent  on  his  prize  to  lock  it. 

Cowen  sat  and  listened. 

He  heard  the  wine  gurgle,  and  the 
drunkard  draw  a  long  breath  of  delight. 

Then  there  was  a  pause ;  then  a  snatch 
of  song,  rather  melodious,  and  more  articu- 
late than  Mr.  Cutler's  recent  attempts  at 
discourse. 

Then  another  gurgle,  and  another  loud, 
"Ah!" 


28 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


Then  a  vocal  attempt,  which  broke  down 
by  degrees. 

Then  a  snore. 

Then  a  somnolent  remark — "All  right." 

Then  a  staggering  on  to  his  feet. 

Then  a  swaying  to  and  fro,  and  a  sub- 
siding against  the  door. 

Then  by-and-by  a  little  reel  at  the  bed, 
and  a  fall  flat  on  the  floor. 

Then  stertorous  breathing. 

Cowen  sat  still  at  the  key-hole  some 
time,  then  took  off  his  boots  and  softly 
mounted  his  chair  and  applied  his  eye  to 
the  peep-hole. 

Cutler  was  lying  on  his  stomach  between 
the  table  and  the  bed. 

Cowen  came  to  the  door  on  tiptoe  and 
turned  the  handle  gently ;  the  door  yielded. 

He  lost  nerve  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life.  What  horrible  shame,  should  the 
man  come  to  his  senses  and  Bee  him! 
He  stepped  back  into  his  own  room, 
ripped  up  his  portmanteau,  and  took  out, 
from  between  the  leather  and  the  lining, 
a  disguise  and  a  mask.     He  put  them  on. 

Then  be  took  his  loaded  cane;  for  he 
thought  to  himself,  "No  more  stabbing 
in  that  room,"  and  he  crept  through  the 
door  like  a  cat. 

The  man  lay  breathing  stertorously,  and 
his  lips  blowing  nut  at  every  exhalation 
like  lifeless  lips  urged  by  a  strong  wind, 
so  that  Cowen  began  to  fear,  not  that  he 
might  wake  but  that  he  might  die. 

It  flashed  across  him  he  should  have  to 
leave  England. 

What  he  came  to  do  seemed  now  won- 
derfully easy ;  he  took  the  key  by  its  rib- 
bon carefully  off  the  sleeper's  neck,  un- 
locked the  dispatch-box,  took  off  his  hat, 
put  the  gold  into  it,  locked  the  dispatch- 
box,  replaced  the  key,  took  up  his  hatful 
of  money,  and  retired  slowly  on  tiptoe  as 
he  came. 

He  had  but  deposited  his  stick  and  the 
booty  on  the  bed,  when  the  sham  drunkard 
pinned  him  from  behind,  and  uttered  a 
shrill  whistle.  With  a  fierce  snarl  Cowen 
whirled  his  captor  round  like  a  feather, 
and  dashed  with  him  against  the  post  of 
his  own  door,  stunning  the  man  so  that  be 
relaxed  his  hold — and  Cowen  whirled  him 


round  again,  and  kicked  him  in  the 
stomach  so  felly  that  he  was  doubled  up 
out  of  the  way,  and  contributed  nothing 
more  to  the  struggle  except  his  last  meal. 
At  this  very  moment  two  Bow  Street  run- 
ners rushed  madly  upon  Cowen  through  the 
door  of  communication.  He  met  one  in 
full  career  with  a  blow  so  tremendous  that 
it  sounded  through  the  house,  and  drove 
him  all  across  the  room  against  the  win- 
dow, where  he  fell  down  senseless;  the 
other  lie  struck  rather  short,  and  though 
the  blood  spurted  and  the  man  staggered, 
lie  was  on  him  again  in  a  moment,  and 
pinned  him.  Cowen,  a  master  of  pugil- 
ism, got  his  head  under  his  left  shoulder, 
and  pommeled  him  cruelly;  but  the  fellow 
managed  to  hold  on  till  a  powerful  foot 
kicked  in  the  door  at  a  blow  and  Bradbury 
himself  sprang  on  Captain  Cowen  with 
all  the  fury  of  a  tiger;  he  seized  him  by 
the  fchroal  from  behind,  and  throttled  him, 
and  set  his  knee  to  his  back;  the  other, 
though  mauled  and  bleeding,  whipped  out 
a  short  rope  and  pinioned  him  in  a  turn 
of  the  baud.  Then  all  stood  panting  but 
the  disabled  men,  and  once  more  the  pass- 
age  and  the  room  were  filled  with  pale 
faces  and  panting  bosoms. 

Lights  flashed  on  the  scene,  and  in- 
stantly loud  screams  from  the  landlady 
and  her  maids,  and  as  they  screamed 
they  pointed   with  trembling   fingers. 

And  well  they  might.  There — caught 
red-handed  in  an  act  of  robbery  and 
violence,  a  few  steps  from  the  place  of 
the  mysterious  murder — stood  the  stately 
figure  of  Captain  Cowen  a^d  the  mottled 
face  and  bottle  nose  of  Daniel  Cox,  con- 
demned to  die  in  just  twelve  hours'  time! 


CHAPTER  IV. 

"  At,  scream  ye  fools,"  roared  Bradbury, 
"that  couldn't  see  a  church  by  daylight.'" 
Then,  shaking  his  fist  at  Cowen :  "  Thou 


THE   KNIGHTSBRIDGE   MYSTERY. 


29 


villain!  'Tisn't  one  man  you  have  mur- 
dered, 'tis  two.  But,  please  God,  I'll  save 
ono  of  them  yet,  and  hang  you  in  his 
place.  Way  there!  not  a  moment  to 
lose." 

In  another  minute  they  were  all  in  the 
yard,  and  a  hackney  coach  sent  for. 

Captain  Cowen  said  to  Bradbury,  "  This 
thing  on  my  face  is  choking  me." 

"  Oh,  better  than  you  have  been  choked 
— at  Tyburn  and  all." 

"  Hang  me.  Don't  pillory  me.  I've 
served  my  country." 

Bradbury  removed  the  wax  mask.  He 
said  afterward  he  had  no  power  to  refuse 
the  villain,  he  was  so  grand  and  gentle. 

"  Thank  you,  sir.  Now  what  can  I  do 
for  you?     Save  Daniel  Cox?" 

"Ay,  do  that  and  I'll  forgive  you." 

"  Give  me  a  sheet  of  paper." 

Bradbury,  impressed  by  the  man's  tone 
of  sincerity,  took  him  into  the  bar,  and, 
getting  all  his  men  round  him,  placed 
paper  and  ink  before  him. 

He  addressed  to  General  Barrington,  in 
attendance  on  his  majesty,  these : 

"General — See  his  majesty  betimes, 
tell  him  from  me  that  Daniel  Cox,  con- 
demned to  die  at  noon,  is  innocent,  and 
get  him  a  reprieve.  Oh,  Barrington, 
come  to  your  lost  comrade.  The  bearer 
will  tell  you  where  I  am.     I  cannot. 

"Edward  Cowen." 

"  Send  a  man  you  can  trust  to  Windsor 
with  that,  and  take  me  to  my  most  wel- 
come death." 

A  trusty  officer  was  dispatched  to  Wind- 
sor, and  in  about  an  hour  Cowen  was  lodged 
in  Newgate. 

All  that  night  Bradbury  labored  to  save 
the  man  that  was  condemned  to  die.  He 
knocked  up  the  sheriff  of  Middlesex  and 
told  him  all. 

"Don't  come  to  me,"  said  the  sheriff; 
"go  to  the  minister." 

He  rode  to  the  minister's  house.  The 
minister  was  up.  His  wife  gave  a  ball — 
windows  blazing,  shadows  dancing — music 
— lights — night  turned  into  day.  Bradbury 
knocked.     The  door  flew  open  and  revealed 


a  line  of  bedizened  footmen  dotted  at  inter- 
vals up  the  stairs. 

"  I  must  see  my  lord.  Life  or  death. 
I'm  an  officer  from  Bow  Street." 

"You  can't  see  my  lord.  He  is  enter 
taining  the  Proosian  Embassador  and  his 
sweet. " 

"  I  must  see  him,  or  an  innocent  man 
will  die  to-morrow.  Tell  him  so.  Here's 
a  guinea." 

"  Is  there?     Step  aside  here." 

He  waited  in  torments  till  the  message 
went  through  the  gamut  of  lackeys,  and 
got  more  or  less  mutilated,  to  the  minister. 

He  detached  a  buffer,  who  proposed  to 
Mr.  Bradbury  to  call  at  the  Do-little  office 
in  Westminster  next  morning. 

"  No,"  said  Bradbury,  "  I  don't  leave  the 
house  till  I  see  him.  Innocent  blood  shall 
not  be  spilled  for  want  of  a  word  in  time." 

The  buffer  retired,  and  in  came  a  duffer, 
who  said  the  occasion  was  not  convenient. 

"Ay,  but  it  is,"  said  Bradbury,  "and  if 
my  lord  is  not  here  in  five  minutes  I'll  go 
upstairs  and  tell  my  tale  before  them  all, 
and  see  if  they  are  all  hair-dressers'  dum- 
mies, without  heart,  or  conscience,  or 
sense." 

In  five  minutes  in  came  a  gentleman 
with  an  order  on  his  breast,  and  said, 
"You  are  a  Bow  Street  officer?" 

"Yes,  my  lord." 

"Name?" 

"Bradbury." 

"  You  say  the  man  condemned  to  die 
to-morrow  is  innocent?" 

"Yes,  my  lord." 

"  How  do  you  know?" 

"Just  taken  the  real  culprit." 

"  When  is  the  other  to  suffer?" 

"Twelve  to-morrow." 

"Seems  short  time.  Humph!  Will  you 
be  good  enough  to  take  a  line  to  the  sheriff? 
Formal  message  to-morrow." 

The  actual  message  ran  : 

"  Delay  execution  of  Cox  till  we  hear 
from  Windsor.    Bearer  will  give  reasons." 

With  this  Bradbury  hurried  away,  not 
to  the  sheriff,  but  the  prison ;  and  infected 
the  jailer  and  the  chaplain  and  all  the  turn- 
keys with  pity  for  the  condemned,  and  the 
spirit  of  delay. 


30 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Bradbury  breakfasted,  and  washed  bis 
face,  and  off  to  the  sheriff.  Sheriff  was 
gone  out.  Bradbury  hunted  him  from 
pillar  to  post  and  could  find  him  no- 
where. He  was  at  last  obliged  to  go 
and  wait  for  him  at  Newgate. 

He  arrived  at  the  stroke  of  twelve  to 
superintend  the  execution.  Bradbury  put 
the  minister's  note  into  his  hand. 

"  This  is  no  use,"  said  he.  "  I  want  an 
order  from  his  majesty,  or  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil at  least." 

••  Not  to  delay."  suggested  the  chaplain. 
"You  have  all  the  day  for  it." 

"All  the  day!  I  can't  be  all  the  day 
hanging  a  single  man.  My  time  is  pre- 
cious, gentlemen."  Then,  his  bark  being 
worse  than  bis  bite,  he  said,  "  1  shall  come 
again  at  four  o'clock,  and  then,  if  there  is 
no  Dews  from  Windsor,  the  law  must  take 
its  cou. 

He  never  came  again,  though,  for.  even 
as  he  turned  his  back  to  retire,  there  was 
a  faint  cry  from  the  farthest  part  of  the 
crowd,  a  paper  raised  on  a  hussar's  lance, 
and,  as  the  mob  fell  hark  on  every  side,  a 
n-yal  aid-de-camp  rode  up.  followed  closely 
by  the  mounted  runner,  and  delivered  t" 
ill' a  reprieve  tinder  the  sign-manual 
of  his  majesty,  George  the  First. 

At  -.'  p.  M.  of  the  same  day,  General  Sir 
Robert  Barrington  reached  Ww^-ate,  and 
saw  Captain  Cowen  in  private.  That  un- 
happy man  fell  on  his  knees  and  made  a 
confession. 

Barrington  was  horrified,  and  turned  as 
cold  as  ice  to  him.     He  stood  ere 
statue.  "  A  soldier — to  rob,"  said  he.  "  Mur- 
der was  had  enough — but  to  rob !" 

Cowen,  with  his  head  and  hands  all 
hanging  down,  could  only  say.  faintly, 
"I  have  been  robbed  and  ruined,  and  it 
was- for  my  hoy.  Ah  me!  what  will  be- 
come of  him  ?  I  have  lost  my  soul  for  him, 
and  now  he  will  be  ruined  and  disgraced — 
by  me,  who  would  have  died  for  him."  The 
strong  man  shook  with  agony  and  his  head 
and  hands  almost  touched  the  ground. 

Sir  Robert  Barrington  looked  at  him  and 
pondered. 

"No,"  said  he,  relenting  a  little,  "that 


is  the  one  thing  I  can  do  for  you.  I  had 
made  up  my  mind  to  take  your  son  to 
Canada  as  my  secretary,  and  I  will  take 
him.  But  he  must  change  his  name.  I 
sail  next  Thursday." 

The  broken  man  stared  wildly,  then 
started  up  and  blessed  him;  and  from 
that  moment  the  wild  hope  entered  his 
breast  that  he  might  keep  his  son  un- 
stained  by  his  crime,   and  even   ignorant 

of    it. 

Barrington  said  that  was  impossible; 
luii  yielded  to  the  father's  prayers,  and 
consented  to  act  as  if  it  was  possible.  He 
would  send  a  messenger  to  Oxford,  with 
money  and  instructions  to  bring  the  young 
man  up  and  put  him  on  board  the  ship  at 
Gravesend. 

This  difficult    scheme   once  conceived, 
there  was   not  a  moment  to  be  lost.      Bar- 
own  a  mounted  messenger  to 
Oxford,  with  money  and  instructions. 

I  Iradbury,  and  asked  him 
when  he  was  to  appear  at  Bow  Street. 

"  To-morrow,  I  suppose." 

"Do  me  a  favor.  (Jet  all  your  wit- 
nesses: make  the  ease  complete,  and  show 
me  only  once  to  the  public  before  I  am 
tried." 

"Well,  captain,"  said  Bradbury,  "you 
were  square  with  me  about  poor  Cox.  I 
i  as  it  matters  much  to  you;  but 
I'll  not  say  you  nay."  He  saw  the  solicitor 
for  the  crown,  and  asked  a  few  days  to 
collect  all  his  evidence.  The  functionary 
named  Friday. 

This  was  conveyed  next  day  to  Cowen, 
and  put  him  in  a  fever;  it  gave  him  a 
chance  of  keeping  his  son  ignorant,  but  no 
certainty.  Ships  were  eternally  detained 
at  Gravesend,  waiting  for  a  wind;  there 
were  no  steam  tugs  then  to  draw  them 
into  blue  water.  Even  going  down  the 
Channel  letters  boarded  them,  if  the  wind 
slacked.  He  walked  his  room  to  and  fro, 
like  a  caged  tiger,  day  and  night. 

Wednesday  evening  Barrington  came 
with  the  news  that  his  son  was  at  the 
"Star*-  in  Cornhill.  " I  have  got  him  to 
bed,"  said  he,  "and,  Lord  forgive  me,  I 
have  let  him  think  he  will  see  you  before 
we  aro  down  to  Gravesend  to-morrow." 


THE   KXIGHTSBRIDGE    MYSTERY. 


31 


"  Then  let  rne  see  him,"  said  the  miser- 
able father.  "  He  shall  know  naught  from 
me."  They  applied  to  the  jailer,  and  urged 
that  he  could  be  a  prisoner  all  the  time, 
surrounded  by  constables  in  disguise.  No; 
the  jailer  would  not  risk  his  place  and  an 
indictment.  Bradbury  was  sent  for,  and 
made  light  of  the  responsibility.  "  I 
brought  him  here,"  said  he,  "and  I  will 
take  him  to  the  'Star,'  I  and  my  fellows. 
Indeed,  he  will  give  us  no  trouble  this 
time.  Why,  that  would  blow  the  gaff, 
and  make  the  young  gentleman  fly  to  the 
whole  thing." 

"  It  can  only  be  done  by  authority,"  was 
the  jailer's  reply. 

"Then  by  authority  it  shall  be  done," 
said  Sir  Robert.  "Mr.  Bradbury,  have 
three  men  here  with  a  coach  at  one 
o'clock,  and  a  regiment,  if  you  like,  to 
watch  the  '  Star. '  " 

Punctually  at  one  came  Barrington  with 
an  authority.  It  was  a  request  from  the 
queen.  The  jailer  took  it  respectfully.  It 
was  an  authority  not  worth  a  button;  but 
he  knew  he  could  not  lose  his  place  with 
this  writing  to  brandish  at  need. 

The  father  and  son  dined  with  the  gen- 
eral at  the  "Star."  Bradbury  and  one  of 
his  fellows  waited  as  private  servants : 
other  officers  in  plain  clothes  watched 
back  and  front. 

At  three  o'clock  father  and  son  parted, 
the  son  with  many  tears,  the  father  with 
dry  eyes,  but  a  voice  that  trembled  as  he 
blessed  him. 

Young  Cowen,  now  Morris,  went  down 
to  Gravesend  with  his  chief ;  the  criminal 
back  to  Newgate,  respectfully  bowed  from 
the  door  of  the  "Star"  by  landlord  and 
waiters. 

At  first  he  was  comparatively  calm,  but 
as  the  night  advanced  became  restless,  and 
by-and-by  began  to  pace  his  cell  again 
like  a  caged  lion. 

At  twenty  minutes  past  eleven  a  turn- 
key brought  him  a  line ;  a  horseman  had 
galloped  in  with  it  from  Gravesend : 

"  A  fair  wind — we  weigh  anchor  at  the 
full  tide.     It  is  a  merchant  vessel,  and  the 


captain  under  my  orders  to  keep  off  shore 
and  take  no  messages.  Farewell.  Turn 
to  the  God  you  have  forgotten.  He  alone 
can  pardon  you." 

On  receiving  this  note,  Cowen  betook 
him  to  his  knees. 

In  this  attitude  the  jailer  found  him 
when  he  went  his  round 

He  waited  till  the  captain  rose,  and 
then  let  him  know  that  an  able  lawyer 
was  in  waiting  instructed  to  defend  him 
at  Bow  Street  next  morning.  The  truth 
is  the  females  of  the  "  Swan"  had  clubbed 
money  for  this  purpose. 

Cowen  declined  to  see  him.  "  I  thank 
you,  sir,"  said  he.  "  I  will  defend  myself." 

He  said,  however,  he  had  a  little  favor 
to  ask.  "I  have  been,"  said  he,  "of  late 
much  agitated  and  fatigued,  and  a  sore 
trial  awaits  me  in  the  morning.  A  few 
hours  of  unbroken  sleep  would  be  a  boon 
to  me." 

"The  turnkeys  must  come  in  to  see  you 
are  all  right." 

"It  is  their  duty;  but  I  will  lie  in  sight 
of  the  door  if  they  will  be  good  enough 
not  to  wake  me." 

"There  can  be  no  objection  to  that,  cap- 
tain, and  I  am  glad  to  see  you  calmer." 

"Thank  you;  never  calmer  in  my  life." 

He  got  his  pillow,  set  two  chairs,  and 
composed  himself  to  sleep.  He  put  the 
candle  on  the  table,  that  the  turnkeys 
might  peep  through  the  door  and  see 
him. 

Once  or  twice  they  peeped  in  very  softly, 
and  saw  him  sleeping  in  the  full  light  of 
the  candle,  to  moderate  which,  apparently, 
he  had  thrown  a  white  handkerchief  over 
his  face. 

At  nine  in  the  morning  they  brought 
him  his  breakfast,  as  he  must  be  at  Bow 
Street  between  ten  and  eleven. 

When  they  came  so  near  him  it  struck 
them  he  lay  too  still. 

They  took  off  the  handkerchief. 

He  had  been  dead  some  hours. 

Yes,  there,  calm,  grave,  and  noble,  in- 
capable, as  it  seemed,  either  of  the  pas- 
sions that  had  destroyed  him  or  the  tender 
affection  which  redeemed  yet  inspired  his 


3:> 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


crimes,  lay  the  corpse  of  Edward  Co  wen. 
Thus  miserably  perished  a  man  in  whom 
were  many  elements  of  greatness. 

He  left  what  little  money  he  had  to  Brad- 
bury, in  a  note  imploring  him  to  keep  par- 
ticulars out  of  the  journals  for  his  son's 
sake,  and  such  was  the  influence  on  Brad- 
bury of  the  scene  at  the  "  Star,"  the  dead 
man's  face,  and  his  dying  words,  that, 
though  public  detail  was  his  interest, 
nothing  transpired  but  that  the  gentle- 
man who  had  been  arrested  on  suspicion 
of  being  concerned  in  the  murder  at  the 
"Swan  Inn"  had  committed  suicide;  to 
which  was  added,  by  another  hand  :  "  Cox, 
however,  has  the  king's  pardon,  and  the 
affair  still  remains  shrouded  with  mys- 
tery." 

Cox  was  permitted  to  see  the  body  of 
Cowen,  and,  whether  the  features  had  gone 
back  to  youth,  or  his  own  brain,  long 
sobered  in  earnest,  had  enlightened  his 
memory,  recognized  trim  as  a  man  he  had 
seen  committed  for  horse-stealing  at  Ips- 
wich, when  lie  himself  was  the  mayor's 
groom;  but  some  girl  lent  the  accused  a 
file,  and  he  cut,  his  way  out  of  the  cage. 

Cox's  calamity  was  his  greatest  blessing. 
He  went  into  Newgate  scarcely  knowing 


there  was  a  God ;  he  came  out  thoroughly 
enlightened  in  that  respect  by  the  teaching 
of  the  chaplain  and  the  death  of  Cowen. 
He  went  in  a  drunkard ;  the  noose  that 
dangled  over  his  head  so  long  terrified 
him  into  life-long  sobriety — for  he  laid  all 
the  blame  on  liquor — and  he  came  out  as 
bitter  a  foe  to  drink  as  drink  had  been  to 
him. 

His  case  excited  sympathy ;  a  consider- 
able sum  was  subscribed  to  set  him  up  in 
trade.  He  became  a  horse-dealer  on  a 
small  scale;  but  he  was  really  a  most  ex- 
cellent judge  of  horses,  and,  being  sober, 
enlarged  his  business;  horsed  a  coach  or 
two;  attended  fairs,  and  eventually  made 
a  fortune  by  dealing  in  cavalry  horses 
under  government  contracts. 

As  his  money  increased,  his  nose  dimin- 
ished, and  when  he  died,  old  and  regretted, 
onlyapink  tinge  revealed  the  habits  of  his 
earlier  life. 

Mrs.  .Martha  Cust  and  Barbara  Lamb 
were  no  longer  sure;  but  they  doubted  to 
their  dying  day  the  innocence  of  the  ugly 
fellow,  and  the  guilt  of  the'  handsome, 
civil-spoken    gentleman. 

But  they  converted  nobody  to  their  opin- 
ion ;  for  they  gave  their  reasons. 


SINGLEHEART,    AND    DOUBLEFACE. 

A    MATTER-OF-FACT  ROMANCE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Matthew  Brent,  a  small  shop-keeper 
in  Green  Street,  Liverpool,  was  a  widower 
with  two  daughters.  Deborah,  the  elder, 
had  plenty  of  tongue  and  mother-wit,  but 
could  not  and  would  not  study  anything 
on  earth  if  it  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
written  or  printed.     Sarah,  the  younger, 


showed  attention  and  application  from  her 
childhood. 

Her  father  cultivated  those  powers,  for 
they  are  the  roots  of  all  excellence,  and  he 
knew  it.  He  sent  the  girl  to  school,  and 
there  she  learned  the  usual  smattering;  and 
one  thing  worth  it  all,  viz.,  how  to  teach 
herself.  Under  that  abler  tuition  she 
learned  to  write  like  a  clerk,  to  keep  her 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


33 


father's  books,  to  remember  the  price  of 
every  article  in  the  shop,  to  serve  the  cus- 
tomers when  required,  and  to  read  for  her 
own  pleasure  and  instruction.  At  eighteen 
she  was  Brent's  right  hand  all  day,  and  his 
reader  at  night. 

Deborah,  who  could  only  spell  The  Mer- 
cury, and  would  not  do  that  if  she  could 
get  Sally  to  read  it  out,  found  her  level  as 
cook,  housekeeper  and  market-woman.  At 
twenty  she  was  very  tall,  supple  and  mus- 
cular; comely  but  freckled,  reddish  hair, 
a  very  white  skin,  only  it  tanned  easily. 
It  revealed  its  natural  beauty  in  her 
throat,  and  above  all  in  the  nape  of  her 
neck.  This  nape,  snowy  and  solid,  and  a 
long  row  of  ivory  teeth,  were  her  beauties. 
She  married  quite  young  —  her  father's 
cousin,  a  small  farmer  —  and  settled  in 
Berkshire,  her  native  county. 

Sarah  Brent  was  about  two  inches 
shorter  than  Deborah,  but  a  finer  figure; 
had  an  oval  face  full  of  modesty  and 
gentle  dignity.  Her  skin  was  also  white, 
and  revealed  itself  in  her  shapely  hands 
as  well  as  her  alabaster  throat.  Her  hair 
brown,  and  so  were  two  fearless  eyes  that 
looked  at  people  full  without  staring. 
When  she  was  nineteen  a  worthy  young 
fellow,  called  Joseph  Pinder,  fell  in  love 
with  her  and  courted  her.  He-  was  sheep- 
ish and  distant  in  his  approaches,  for  he 
looked  on  her  as  a  superior  being.  She 
never  chattered,  yet  could  always  answer 
civilly  and  wisely;  this,  and  her  Madonna- 
like face,  made  Joe  Pinder  reverence  her. 
Her  father  thought  highly  of  him,  and 
connived  at  his  visits,  and  so  they  were 
often  seen  together  in  a  friendly  way ;  but 
when  he  began  to  make  downright  love  to 
her,  she  told  him  calmly  she  could  go  no 
farther  than  friendship ;  "  and  indeed,"  said 
she,  "  I  would  never  leave  my  father  for 
any  young  man." 

Joseph  Pinder  knew  that  this  declara- 
tion has  often  preceded  connubial  rites, 
and  continued  his  friendh' assiduities;  and 
these  two  often  came  back  from  church  to- 
gether, he  glowing  with  delight  at  being 
near  her,  and  she  cool  and  friendly. 

The  Brents  were  in  a  small  way  of  busi- 
ness, and  Sarah's  adorer  was  a  decorative 

Readk— Vol.  IX. 


painter,  and  what  is  called  in  trade  a 
"  writer" — one  of  those  astounding  artists 
who,  by  skillful  shading,  make  gilt  letters 
appear  concave  or  convex,  or  stand  out 
bodily  from  a  board  or  wall,  and  blazon  a 
shop-keepers'  name  and  business.  On  one 
occasion  he  had  a  large  job  of  this  sort  to 
do  in  Manchester.  It  took  him  a  fort- 
night, and  led  to  another  at  Preston.  In 
a  month  he  came  back  with  money  in  both 
pockets,  and  full  of  joy  at  the  prospect  of 
meeting  Sarah  again. 

He  found  the  Brents  at  supper,  and  there 
was  a  young  man  with  them  who  had  a 
deal  to  say,  and  made  the  old  man  smile, 
while  the  young  woman  often  looked  fur- 
tively at  him  with  undisguised  compla- 
cency. This  was  a  second  cousin  of  Mr. 
Brent's,  one  James  Mansell,  a  painter  and 
grainer,  who  had  settled  in  the  town  while 
Pinder  was  away. 

Pinder's  heart  sank  at  this,  and  instead 
of  exerting  himself  in  vigorous  competi- 
tion, he  became  more  silent  and  more  de- 
pressed the  more  James  Mansell  rattled 
away ;  in  short,  he  was  no  company  at  all, 
because  the  other  was  good  company. 

After  a  while  he  said  "Good-night." 

A  coquette  would  have  followed  him  to 
the  door  and  smoothed  matters;  but  that 
was  not  Sarah  Brent's  line;  she  said 
"Good -night"  kindly  enough,  but  she 
never  moved,  and  James  Mansell 's  tongue 
resumed  its  headlong  course. 

This  was  the  first  of  many  such  scenes. 
Sarah  was  always  kind,  but  cool,  to  her 
old  admirer,  and  manifestly  attracted  by 
the  new  one.  Indeed,  it  came  to  this  at 
last  that  Pinder  could  never  get  a  walk 
with  her  alone  except  from  church. 

On  one  occasion  he  ventured  on  a  mild 
remonstrance :  "  If  you  had  not  told  me  you 
would  never  leave  your  father,  I  should  be 
almost  afraid  that  James  Mansell  would 
entice  you  away  from  us  all." 

"From  everybody  else  —  but  not  from 
father. " 

One  would  think  that  was  plain  enough, 
but  Joe  could  not  realize  it;  and  he  went 
on  to  ask  her  if  she  could  really  find  it  in 
her  heart  to  throw  such  an  old  friend  as 
him  over  for  a  stranger. 

'2 


34 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


She  replied,  calmly,  "Am  I  changed  to 
you  any  way?  I  always  respected  you, 
and  I  respect  you  still." 

"That  is  a  comfort,  Sarah.  But  if  this 
goes  on,  I'm  afraid  you  will  like  another 
man  far  better  than  me,  whether  you  re- 
spect me  or  not. " 

"That  is  my  business,"  said  she,  firmly. 

"Isn't  it  mine,  too,  Sarah?  We  have 
kept  company  this  two  years." 

"As  friends;  but  nothing  more.  I  have 
never  misled  you,  and  now  if  you  are  wise 
you  will  take  up  with  some  other  girl. 
You  can  find  as  good  as  me." 

"Not  in  this  world." 

"Nonsense,  Joe;  and  besides — " 

"  Well,  what?" 

"  I  am  one  that  forecasts  a  little,  and  I 
am  afraid  you  will  tease  me,  and  pain 
yourself,  and  some  day  we  shall  part  had 
friends,  and  that  would  be  a  pity,  after  all." 

"Nothing  but  death  shall  part  us." 

"  Yes,  this  door  will.  Father  is  not  well 
to-night."  The  door  in  question  was  the 
side  door  of  her  own  house. 

Pinder  took  the  hint  and  bade  her 
"Good-night"  affectionately. 

He  walked  a  little  way  out  into  the  coun- 
try by  himself,  wonderingnow  whether  she 
would  ever  bo  his.  He  was  dejected,  hut 
not  in  despair.  In  his  class  of  life  men 
and  women  have  often  two  or  three  warm- 
ish courtships  before  they  marry.  Sarah 
was  not  of  that  sort,  hut  this  James  Alan- 
sell  would  he  as  likely  as  not  to  leave  the 
town,  and  think  no  more  of  Sarah  Brent. 
In  his  trade  it  was  here  to-day  and  there 
to-morrow,  and  he  did  not  look  like  the 
man  to  cling  to  the  absent.  Pinder  re- 
turned homeward  by  Green  Street  to  have 
a  last  look  at  the  shell  which  held  his 
pearl. 

As  he  passed  by  on  the  other  side  of  the 
way  James  Mansell  came  and  knocked  at 
Mr.  Brent's  side  door.  Pinder  waited 
with  a  certain  degree  of  jealous  malice  to 
see  him  excluded.  Sarah  came  to  the  door 
and  parleyed  ;  probably  she  told  him  her 
father  was  unwell.  Pinder  went  on  a  lit- 
tle way,  and  then  turned  to  see. 

The  colloquy  continued.  It  seemed  in- 
terminable.    The  woman  he  loved  was  in 


no  hurry  now  to  get  back  to  her  sick  father, 
and  when  she  did,  what  was  the  result? 
Mansell  was  iuvited  in,  after  all,  and  the 
door  of  heaven  closed  upon  him  instead  of 
in  his  face. 

The  watcher  stood  there  transfixed  with 
the  poisoned  arrow  of  jealousy.  He  was 
sick  and  furious  by  turns,  and  at  last  got 
frightened  at  himself,  and  resolved  to  keep 
out  of  the  way  of  this  James  Mansell,  with 
whom  he  had  no  chance,  Sarah's  prefer- 
ence was  now  so  clear. 

But  he  was  too  much  in  love  to  forego 
the  walks  from  church ;  and  Sarah  never 
objected  to  his  company,  nor,  indeed,  to 
his  coming  in  to  supper  afterward.  But 
lie  was  sure  to  find  his  rival  there,  and  be 
reduced  to  a  sullen  cipher. 

So  things  went  on.  Ho  did  not  see  what 
passed  between  Mansell  and  Sarah  Brent, 
the  open  wooing  of  the  man,  the  timid 
tumult  in  the  woman,  expanding,  ripen- 
ing, blushing,  thrilling,  and  blooming  in 
the  new  sunshine.  But  he  discovered  a 
good  deal;  she  seemed  gliding  gradually 
away  from  him  down  a  gentle  but  inexor- 
able slope.  She  was  as  friendly  in  her 
cool  way  as  ever,  but  scarcely  attended 
to  him.  Her  mind  seemed  elsewhere  at 
times,  even  in  that  short  walk  from  church, 
sole  relic  now  of  their  languid  but  unbroken 
friendship. 

The  time  came  when  even  this  privilege 
was  disputed.  One  Sunday  James  Man- 
sell  arrived  in  Green  Street  earlier  than 
usual.  He  heard  where  Sarah  was,  so  he 
came  to  meet  her.  She  was  walking  with 
Pinder.  Mansell  had  been  drinking  a  lit- 
tle, and  did  not  know,  perhaps,  how  little 
cause  he  had  for  jealousj*.  He  stepped 
rudely  in  between  Pinder  and  Miss  Brent, 
and  took  her  arm,  whereas  Pinder  had  been 
walking  merely  by  her  side. 

"  What  sort  of  manners  are  these?"  said 
Pinder. 

"They  are  my  manners,"  said  the  other 
haughtily.  "She  has  no  business  to  walk 
with  you  at  all." 

"Don't  insult  her,  at  all  events.  She 
has  walked  with  me  this  two  year." 

"  Well,  then,  now  you  can  go  and  walk 
with  some  other  girl." 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


35 


"Not  at  your  bidding,  you  brute." 
"Oh,  you  want  a  biding,  do  you?" 
"No;  it  is  you  that  want  that." 
James  Mansell  replied  by  a  blow,  which 
took  Piuder  unawares,  and  sent  him  stag- 
gering. 

He  would  have  followed  it  up,  but  Pin- 
der  stopped  the  second  neatly,  and  gave 
him  a  smart  one  in  return,  crying,  "Cow- 
ard! to  take  a  man  unawares."  Sarah 
was  terrified,  and  clasped  her  hands.  "  Oh, 
pray  do  not  quarrel  about  me!" 

"  Stand  aloof,"  said  Mansell  imperiously. 
"This  must  end."  Sarah  obeyed  the  man, 
who  was  evidently  her  master,  but  implored 
him  not  to  hurt  Joe  Pinder — he  was  only  a 
friend.  The  truth  is  Mansell  had  recounted 
such  deeds  of  prowess  that,  what  with  his 
gasconades  and  her  blind  love,  she  thought 
no  man  could  have  a  chance  with  him. 

He  sparred  well,  and  hit  Pinder  several 
times,  but  rather  short. 

Both  were  soon  infuriated,  and  they  were 
all  over  the  street,  fighting  and  raging. 

Under  similar  circumstances  Virgil's 
heifer  browsed  the  grass  in  undisturbed 
tranquillity,  content  to  know  that  her  mate 
would  be  the  best  bull  of  the  two. 

Not  so  Sarah  Brent.  She  clasped  her 
hands  and  screamed,  and  implored  her 
hero  to  be  merciful.  Her  conscience  whis- 
pered that  her  inoffensive  friend  was  being 
hardly  used  in  every  way. 

Presently  her  hero,  after  administering 
several  blows,  and  making  his  adversary 
bleed,  received  a  left-handed  stinger  that 
made  him  recoil.  Maddened  by  this,  he 
rushed  at  Pinder  to  annihilate  him.  But 
Pinder  was  no  novice  either;  he  drew  back 
on  the  point  of  his  toe,  and  met  James 
Mansell's  rush  with  a  tremendous  slogger 
that  sounded  like  a  falling  plank,  and  shot 
him  to  the  earth  at  Sarah  Brent's  very  feet, 
a  distance  of  some  yards. 

All  was  changed  in  a  moment;  she  liter- 
ally bounded  over  the  prostrate  form  and 
stood  between  him  and  danger;  for  in 
Liverpool  they  fight  up  and  down,  as  the 
saying  is.  "You  wretch,"  she  cried,  "to 
kill  the  man  I  love !"  It  was  Pinder's  turn 
to  stagger  before  that  white  cheek,  and 
those  fiery  eyes,  and  that  fatal  word. 


"  Man  you  love?"  said  he. 
"  I    love !     I  love !     I  love !"    cried   she, 
stabbing  with  swift  feminine  instinct  the 
monster  who  had  struck  her  love. 

Then  Pinder  fell  back,  subdued,  with  a 
sigh  of  despair;  she  flung  herself  down,  • 
and    raised    James    Mansell's    head    and 
sobbed  hysterically  over  it. 

Some  people  now  came  up ;  but  Pinder 
in  those  few  seconds  had  undergone  a 
change.  He  stepped  forward,  thrust  the 
people  away,  and  kneeling  down,  lifted 
James  Mansell  up  and  took  him  under 
his  arm.  "Leave  him  to  me,  Sarah," 
said  he. 

"  To  you?"  she  sobbed. 
"Ay;  do  you   think   I  shall   ever   hurt 
him  again,  now  you  have  told  me  you  love 
him?"     And  he  said  it  so  finely  she  knew 
he  meant  it. 

Then  he  sent  to  the  market  public-house 
for  a  sponge  and  some  brand}-,  and  mean- 
time Mansell,  who  was  tough,  came  to  of 
himself;  but  the  water  and  brandy  com- 
pleted his  restoration  to  society.  It  was 
Pinder  who  sponged  his  face  and  nostrils, 
and  took  him  to  Brent's  house,  Sarah 
hovering  near  all  the  time  like  a  hen 
over  her  chickens.  She  whipped  into  the 
house  with  her  pass-key,  and  received  her 
favorite  at  the  door,  then  closed  it  gently, 
but  decidedly — not  that  Joe  Pinder  would 
have  come  in  if  she  had  asked  him.  He 
did  not  even  trust  himself  to  say  "  Good- 
night." It  was  all  over  between  him  and 
her,  and  of  course  he  knew  it. 

When  she  had  got  James  Mansell  safe 
she  made  him  lie  down  on  the  little  sofa, 
and  sat  at  his  head,  applying  cool  linen 
rags  to  his  swollen  cheeks,  and  a  cut  upon 
his  forehead  due  to  Pinder's  knuckles. 

Presently  her  father  came  in  from  visit- 
ing a  sick  friend,  and  at  sight  of  this  group 
asked  what  was  to  do. 

"It  is  that  cruel  Joe  Pinder  been  beat- 
ing him,  father;  I  thought  he  had  killed 
him." 

"What  for?" 

Sarah  blushed  and  was  silent;  she 
wouldn't  own  that  James  was  the  ag- 
gressor, and  yet  she  wouldn't  tell  a  false- 
hood. 


36 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


"Joe  Pinder!"  said  the  old  man:  "he 
was  never  quarrelsome ;  there's  not  a  bet- 
ter-hearted young  man  in  the  town,  nor  a 
more  respectable.  Now  you  tell  me  what 
was  the  quarrel  about?" 

"  Oh,  father !"  said  Sarah,  deprecat- 
ingly. 

"Ay!  ay!  I  needn't  ask,"  said  the  old 
man.  "It  was  about  a  woman,  eh?  You 
might  have  been  better  employed,  all  three, 
this  Sabbath  evening." 

"  Well,  sir,  Sarah  was  only  coming  home 
from  church  this  Sabbath  evening."  said 
Mansell;  "but  as  for  me,  I  was  as  much 
to  blame  as  the  other,  so  let  us  say  no  more 
about  it."  Sarah  whispered,  "  You  are  very 
generous. "  The  subject  dropped  till  the  old 
man  retired  to  rest,  and  then  .Janus  .Man- 
sell,  who  had  been  brooding,  delivered  him- 
self thus:  "lie  is  net  half  a  bad  suit  that 
Joe  Finder.  But  he  is  one  too  many  for 
me,  or  I  am  one  ton  many  fur  him,  so  you 
must  make  up  your  mind  this  night  w  hich 
is  to  be  your  husband,  and  give  the  other 
the  sack." 

This  was  virile,  and  entitled  to  a  femi- 
nine reply.  Itcamo  immediately,  in  what, 
perhaps,  if  we  could  know  the  truth,  is  a 
formula — not  a  word — nor  even  a  syllable 
— but  a  white  wrist  passed  round  the  neck, 
and  a  fair  head  deposited  like  down  upon 
the  shoulder  of  her  conqueror. 

Joseph  Pinder  grieved  and  watched,  but 
troubled  the  lovers  no  more.  James  Man- 
sell  pressed  Sarah  to  name  the  day.  She 
objected.  Her  father's  health  was  break- 
ing, and  she  would  not  leave  him.  Man- 
sell  urged  her ;  she  stood  firm.  He  accused 
her  of  not  loving  him ;  she  sighed,  and  won- 
dered he  could  say  that,  but  was  immov- 
able. 

By-and-by  it  all  came  to  her  father's 
ears.  He  sent  for  a  lawyer  directly,  and 
made  the  shop  and  house  over  to  Sarah  by 
deed  of  gift.  Then  he  told  her  she  need 
not  wait  for  his  death ;  he  would  prefer  to 
see  her  happy  with  the  man  of  her  choice, 
and  also  to  advise  her  in  business  for  the 
little  while  he  had  to  live. 

So  the  banns  were  cried,  and  Joseph 
Pinder  heard  in  silence;  and  in  due  course 


James  Mansell  was  united  to  Sarah  Brent 
in  holy  matrimony. 

In  its  humble  way  this  was  a  promising 
union.  The  man  was  twenty-seven,  the 
woman  twenty,  and  thoughtful  beyond  her 
years.  They  had  health  and  love  and  oc- 
cupation; moreover,  the  man's  work  took 
him  out  of  the  woman's  way,  except  at 
meals,  and  in  the  evening.  Now  nothing 
sweetens  married  life,  and  divests  it  of 
monotony  and  ennui,  more  than  these 
daily  partings  and  meetings.  Mansell 
had  three  trades,  and  in  one  of  them 
(graining)  he  might  be  called  an  artist. 
He  could  imitate  the  common  woods  bet- 
ter than  almost  anybody;  but  at  satin- 
wood,  mahogany,  and  American  birch 
he  was  really  wonderful.  Sarah  was  a 
first-rate  shop-woman,  civil,  prompt,  oblig- 
ing, and  handsome — qualities  that  all  at- 
tract in  business.  She  gave  no  credit 
beyond  a  week,   and  took  none  at  all. 

In  any  class  of  life  it  is  a  fine  thing 
when  both  spouses  caii  contribute  a  share 
to  the  joint  income.  This  is  one  of  the 
boons  found  oftenest  among  the  middle 
classes.  Most  laborers'  wives  can  only 
keep  house,  and  few  gentlemen's  wives 
can  earn  a  penny. 

The  Mansells,  then,  upon  a  large  and 
wide  survey  of  life,  were  in  a  happy  con- 
dition— happier  far  than  any  pair  w*ho  dc 
not  earn  their  living. 

(  hie  day  a  great  sorrow  came,  but  not 
unexpectedly.  Matthew  Brent  died  peace- 
fully, blessing  his  daughters  and  his  son- 
in-law. 

The  next  day  came  a  joyful  event, 
Sarah's  child  was  born — a  lovely  girl. 

Mighty  nature  comforted  the  bereaved 
daughter,  and  soon  the  home  was  as  cheer- 
ful as  ever. 

Indeed,  it  was  not  till  the  third  year  of 
her  marriage  that  a  cloud  appeared,  and 
that  seemed  a  small  one,  no  bigger  than  a 
man's  hand. 

James  Mansell  began  to  come  home 
Saturday  night  instead  of  Saturday  after- 
noon ;  and  the  reason  was  clear,  he  smelled 
of  liquor;  and  though  always  sober,  his 
speech  was  thick  on  these  occasions. 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


Sarah,  who  had  forecasts,  was  alarmed, 
and  spoke  in  time.  She  rememhered  some- 
thing her  father — an  observant  man — had 
said  to  her  in  his  day,  viz.,  that  your 
clever  specimens  of  the  class  which  may 
be  called  artist-mechanics  are  often  ad- 
dicted to  liquor. 

However,  this  prudent  woman  thought 
it  best  not  to  raise  an  argument  about 
drink;  she  merely  represented  to  her  hus- 
band that  there  was  now  a  run  upon  her 
shop  Saturday  afternoon  and  evening,  and 
really  it  was  more  than  she  could  manage 
without  his  assistance;  would  he  be  so 
good  as  to  help  her?  He  assisted  readily 
enough,  and  then  the  Saturday  afternoons 
became  bar  happiest  time.  He  himself 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  business  and  the 
bustle  and  his  wife's  company. 

But  by-and-by  he  came  home  very  late 
on  Monday,  with  the  usual  signs  of  a  drop; 
then  she  advised  him  and  entreated  him, 
but  never  scolded  him.  He  acquiesced, 
and  was  perfectly  good-tempered  though 
in  the  wrong.  But  one  day  in  the  week 
he  would  come  home  late,  and  mumble 
what  is  called  the  Queen's  English,  but  I 
believe  the  people  hold  a  few  shares  in 
it.  Sarah  was  disappointed,  and  a  little 
alarmed,  but  began  to  hope  it  would  go 
no  farther  at  all  events.  However,  one 
Saturday,  if  you  please,  he  did  not  come 
to  help  her  in  the  shop,  did  not  even  come 
home  to  supper,  and  she  had  made  such  a 
nice  supper  for  him.  She  sat  at  the  win- 
dow and  fretted,  she  went  from  the  window 
to  her  sleeping  child  and  back  again,  rest- 
less and  apprehensive. 

At  midnight,  when  the  whole  street  was 
still,  footsteps  rang  on  the  pavement.  She 
looked  out  and  saw  two  men,  each  with  an 
arm  under  the  shoulder  of  a  third,  hoisting 
him  along.  She  darted  to  the  street  door, 
and  received  her  husband  from  the  hands 
of  two  men  who  were  perfectly  sober.  One 
of  them  turned  on  his  heel  and  walked 
swiftly  away  at  sight  of  her.  But  she 
saw  him — for  the  first  time  this  three 
years. 

It  was  Joseph  Pinder. 


CHAPTER   II. 

Mr.  Mansell  began  his  bibulous  career 
with  a  redeeming  quality  more  common  in 
Russia  than  in  England — good-natured  in 
his  cups.  He  chuckled  feebly,  and  op- 
posed the  inertia  of  matter  only,  while 
the  dismayed  wife  pulled  him  and  pushed 
him,  and  at  last  got  him  down  on  the  little 
sofa  in  the  shop  parlor.  Then  she  whipped 
off  his  neck-tie,  and  washed  his  face  in 
diluted  lavender  water,  and  put  her  salts 
to  his  nose.  Being  now  on  his  back,  he 
soon  went  to  sleep  and  breathed  sono- 
rously, while  she  sat  in  her  father's  arm- 
chair and  watched  him  bitterly  and  sadly. 

At  first  his  hard-breathing  alarmed  her, 
and  she  sat  waiting  to  avert  apoplexy. 

But  toward  morning  sleep  overcame  her. 
Then  daylight  coming  in  with  a  shoot 
awakened  her,  and  she  looked  round  on 
the  scene.  The  room  in  disorder,  her  hus- 
band sleeping  off  his  liquor,  she  in  her 
father's  armchair,  not  the  connubial  bed. 

Her  first  thought  was,  "  Oh,  if  father 
could  see  us  now  this  Sabbath  morn !"  she 
got  up  sadly,  and  lighted  fires;  then  went 
upstairs,  washed  and  dressed  the  little  girl 
and  made  her  lisp  a  prayer.  Then,  not 
choosing  the  daughter  to  see  the  father 
in  his  present  condition,  she  went  down 
and  waked  him,  and  made  him  wash  his 
face  and  tidy  himself.  He  asked  for 
brandy;  she  looked  him  in  the  face,  and 
said,  "No,  not  one  drop."  But  he  was  ill 
and  coaxed  her.  She  gave  him  a  table- 
spoonful,  and  then  ground  some  coffee  and 
gave  him  a  cup  hot  and  strong. 

She  was  not  a  hasty  woman,  she  showed 
him  a  face  grave  and  sad,  but  she  did  not 
tell  him  her  mind.  So  then  he  opened  the 
subject  himself. 

"  This  will  be  a  warning  to  me." 

"I  hope  so,"  said  she,  gravely. 

"  Can't  think  how  I  came  to  be  over- 
come like  that." 

"  By  putting  yourself  in  the  way  of  it. 
If  you  had  been  helping  me  at  the  shop, 
that  needed  your  help,  it  would  have  been 
better  for  you,  and  for  me  too." 

"  Well,  I  will  after  this.  It  is  a  warn- 
ing." 


38 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


She  began  to  relent.  "Well,  James,  if 
you  take  it  to  heart,  I  will  not  be  too 
hard,  for  where  is  the  sense  of  nagging 
at  a  man  when  he  owns  his  fault?  But, 
oh,  James,  I  am  so  mortified !  Who  do 
you  think  brought  you  home?"  He  tried 
to  remember,  but  could  not.  "  Well,  one 
of  them  was  the  last  man  in  Liverpool  I 
would  have  to  see  you  let  yourself  down 
so.     It  was  Joe  Pinder." 

"I  never  noticed  him.  What,  was  he 
tight,   too?" 

"No;  if  he  had  been,  I  wouldn't  have 
minded  so  much.  He  was  sober  and  you 
were — •" 

The  man  did  not  seize  the  woman's  sen- 
timent. He  said,  carelessly,  "Oh,  'twas 
he  brought  me  safe  home,  was  it?  He  is 
not  half  a  bad  sort,   then." 

Sarah  stared  a1  this  plain,  straightfor- 
ward view  of  her  old  lover's  conduct.  She 
had  a  greater  desire  to  be  jusi  than  most 
women  have,  but  she  labored  under  femi- 
nine disabilities.  She  was  silent,  and 
weighed  Mansell's  view  of  the  matter, 
hut  came  back  to  her  own.  "I  do  hope," 
said  she.  "you  will  never  be  so  overtook 
again—think  of  your  child— but  if  you  are, 
oh!  pray  don't  come  home  on  that  man's 
arm.  I'd  crawl  home  on  all  fours  sooner 
if  I  was  you." 

"  All  right."  said  he  vaguely.  Then  she 
took  this  opportunity  to  beg  him  to  go  to 
church  with  her  that  morning.  Hitherto 
he  had  always  declined,  but  now  he  con- 
sented almost  eagerly.  He  clutched  at  a 
composition.  He  said.  "Sally,  them  that 
sin  must  suffer."  The  fact  is,  he  expected 
to  hear  his  conduct  denounced  from  the 
pulpit.  Catch  the  pulpit  doing  anything 
of  the  kind !  The  pulpit  is  not  practical, 
and  meddles  little  with  immorality  as  it  is, 
and  rarely  gives  ten  consecutive  minutes 
to  that  particular  vice  which  overruns  the 
land.  James  Mansell  sat  under  a  drizzle 
of  thin  generalities,  and  came  home  com- 
placent. 

His  wife  was  pleased  with  him,  and 
still  more  when  he  took  her  and  Lucy  for 
a  walk  in  the  evening,  and  they  carried 
the  child  by  turns. 

After  this  the  man  kept  within  bounds; 


he  soaked,  but  could  alwaj^s  walk  home. 
To  be  sure,  he  began  to  diffuse  moderate 
inebriety  over  the  whole  week.  This 
caused  the  good  wife  great  distress  of 
mind,  and  led  to  practical  results  that 
alarmed  the  mother  and  the  woman  of 
business.  Mansell  was  still  the  first 
grainer  in  the  place,  and  the  tradesmen 
would  have  employed  him  by  preference 
if  he  could  have  been  relied  on  to  finish 
his  jobs.  But  he  was  so  uncertain:  he 
would  go  to  dinner,  and  stop  at  a  public- 
house;  would  appoint  an  hour  to  com- 
mence, and  be  at  a  public-house.  He 
tired  out  one  good  customer  after  anoth- 
er. The  joint  income  declined  in  conse- 
quence, and,  as  generally  happens,  their 
expenses  increased,  for  Mrs.  Mansell,  get- 
ting no  help  from  her  husband,  was  obliged 
to  take  a  servant. 

Often  in  the  evening  she  would  close  her 
shop  early,  leave  her  child  under  strict 
charge  of  the  girl,  and  go  to  some  public- 
house,  and  there  coax  and  remonstrate, 
and  get  him  away  at  last. 

With  all  this,  she  was  as  true  as  steel  to 
him.  She  never  was  known  to  admit  ho 
was  a  drunkard.  The  most  she  would  ac- 
knowledge to  angry  tradesmen,  and  that 
somewhat  haughtily,  was  that  he  took  a 
drop  now  and  then  to  put  away  the  smell 
of  the  paint. 

But  in  private  she  was  not  so  easy.  She 
expostulated,  she  remonstrated,  she  re- 
proached,  and  sometimes  she  lost  heart, 
and   wept   bitterly  at  his   behavior. 

All  this  had  its  effect.  The  invectives 
galled  Mr.  Mansell's  vanity;  the  tears 
bored  him;  the  total  made  him  sullen, 
and  alienated  his  affection.  The  injured 
party  forgave  freely;  not  so  the  wrong- 
doer. As  he  never  hit  her — which  is  a 
vent — this  gracious  person  began  to  hate 
her.  But  her  love  remained  as  invincible 
as  his  vice. 

Deborah's  husband  died  suddenly  of 
apoplexy.  Sarah  dared  not  go  to  comfort 
her,  and  would  not  tell  the  reason.  She 
begged  the  mourner  to  come  to  her. 

Deborah  came,  and  the  sisters  rocked 
|  together,  country  fashion,  crying;  though 


SING LEHE ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


39 


such  different  characters,  they  had  a  true 
affection  for  each  other. 

By-and-by  Deborah  told  her,  with  an- 
other burst  of  grief,  her  husband  had  left 
her  nothing  but  debt.  She  was  next  door 
to  a  beggar. 

"Not  while  I  live,"  was  the  quiet  reply. 
"  Stay  with  me  for  good,  that  is  all."  The 
servant  was  discharged  at  Deborah's  re- 
quest :  she  said  she  must  work  hard  or  die 
of  grief.  Accordingly,  she  went  about 
crying,  but  working,  and  all  the  steel 
things  began  to  shine  and  the  brass  to 
glitter,  because  there  was  a  bereaved 
widow  in  the  house. 

This  was  a  great  comfort  in  every  way 
to  Sarah ;  she  could  leave  the  house  with 
more  confidence  when  her  beloved  had  to 
be  dragged  away  from  liquid  ruin,  and 
also  it  did  her  good  to  sympathize  with 
her  bereaved  sister.  She  forebore  at  that 
time  to  tell  Deborah  her  own  trouble ;  and 
this  trait  indicates,  I  think,  the  depth  of 
her  character. 

As  for  Deborah,  she  soon  cried  herself 
out,  and  one  afternoon  Sarah  heard  her 
laughing  with  the  baker's  man — laughing 
from  the  chest,  as  young  ladies  are  ordered 
to  sing  (but  forbidden  by  Sir  Corset),  and 
an  octave  lower  than  she  had  ever  spoken 
upstairs  since  she  came. 

Sarah  was  surprised,  and  almost  shocked 
at  first.  But  she  said  to  herself,  "Poor 
Deb,  she  is  as  light-hearted  as  ever;  and 
why  should  she  break  her  heart  for  him? 
he  wouldn't  for  her." 

By-and-by  Deborah  used  to  leave  the 
house  when  her  work  was  done,  if  Sarah 
stayed  at  home.  She  could  not  read,  so  she 
must  walk  and  she  must  talk.  She  had 
not  read  a  single  book  this  five  years;  but 
her  powers  of  conversation  were  developed. 
She  had  sold  country  produce  in  two  mar- 
kets weekly,  and  picked  up  plenty  of  coun- 
try proverbs  and  market  chaff. 

She  soon  took  to  visiting  all  her  old  ac- 
quaintances in  the  place,  and  talked  nine- 
teen to  the  dozen  —  and  here  observe  a 
phenomenon.  Her  whole  vocabularly  was 
about  nine  hundred  words,  whereas  you 
and  I  know  ten  thousand  and  more,  yet 
she  would  ring  a  triple  bob  major  on  that 


small  vocabulary,  and  talk  learned  us  to  a 
stand-still.  As  her  talk  was  all  gossip,  she 
soon  knew  more  about  the  Mansells  than 
they  knew  themselves,  and  heard  that 
Mansell  drank   and  lived  upon  his  wife. 

This  gave  her  honest  concern.  Now  she 
held  the  clew  to  Sarah's  absences  and  fre- 
quent return  with  her  husband  in  charge 
and  inarticulate.  She  did  not  blurt  it  out 
to  her  sister,  nor  was  she  angry  at  her 
want  of  confidence.  She  knew  Sarah's 
character,  and  rather  admired  her  for  not 
exposing  her  man  to  any  human  creature. 
Still,  when  she  did  know  it,  she  threw  out 
so  many  hints  one  after  another  that  Sarah, 
who,  poor  soul,  yearned  for  sympathy, 
made  at  last  a  partial  disclosure,  with 
many  a  sigh. 

Deborah  made  light  of  it,  and  hoped  it 
was  only  for  a  time,  and  after  all  Sarah 
was  glad  she  knew,  for  Deborah's  tongue 
was  not  in  reality  so  loose  as  it  was  fluent. 
She  could  chatter  without  any  appearance 
of  reserve,  and  yet  be  as  close  as  wax. 
She  brought  home  to  Sarah  all  she  heard, 
but  she  never  told  anything  out  of  the 
house. 

One  day  she  said  to  Sarah,  "  Do  you 
know  a  man  called  Varney — Dick  Var- 
ney?"  Sarah  said  she  had  never  heard  his 
name. 

"Then,"  said  Deborah,  "you  ought  to 
know  him." 

"Why?" 

"  Because  when  you  know  your  enemy 
you  can  look  out  for  him,  and  he  is  your 
enemy  after  a  manner;  for  'tis  he  that 
leads  your  husband  astray,  so  that  young 
man  said." 

"  What  young  man?" 

"  I  think  his  name  is  Spencer,  and  some- 
body called  him  Joe ;  he  was  a  good-look- 
ing chap  anyway.  I  suppose  he  was  a 
friend  of  Jemmy  Mansell's.  Somebody 
did  praise  you  for  a  good  daughter  and 
a  good  wife,  but  one  that  had  made  a  bad 
bargain ;  then  that  was  the  signal  for  each 
to  have  a  fling  at  Jemmy  Mansell.  Never 
you  mind  what  they  said.  This  handsome 
chap  stood  up  for  him,  and  said  the  man 
was  a  first-rate  workman,  and  meant  no 
harm,  but  he  had  got  a  tempter,  this  Dick 


40 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


Varney.  So  then  I  told  the  young  chap 
who  I  was,  and  he  seemed  quite  pleased 
like,  and  said  he  had  heard  of  me.  Of 
course  what  he  said  I  stood  hy.  I  said 
there  couldn't  be  a  better  husband  or  a 
better  man — bar  drink— than  James  Man- 
sell." 

Sarah  thanked  her,  but  said,  "Oh,  that 
we  should  come  to  be  talked  of!" 

"  Everybody  is,  within  walls,"  said  Deb- 
orah, "and  them  that  listens  learns.  By 
the  same  token,  you  keep  your  eye  on  that 
Varney." 

"How  can  I?     I  don't  know  him." 
"No  more  you  do,  and   what  a  stupid 
I  must  be  not  to  ask  that   good-looking 
chap  more  about  him.     1  wonder  who  he 
is;   I  will  ask  James." 
"No." 

"  Why  not?" 
-  1 1  -ill >* -  him  to  me." 
"Well,  he  is  tall  and  broad-shouldered, 
ami  lias  light  hair,  ami  dark  gray  eyes 
like  jewels,  and  teeth  as  white  as  milk, 
and  a  gentle,  pleasant  way;  looks  a  bit 
sad,  lie  does,  as  if  he  had  been  erossed  in 
love,  but  that  is  not  likely — no  woman 
would  be  Buch  a  fool  that  had  eyes  in  her 
i,    :  Then  he  was  very  clean  and  neat, 

like  a  man  that  respected  hisself,  and  low- 
ered his  voice  a  bit  to  speak  to  a  woman. 
There's  a  duck  !" 

Sarah  looked  a  little  surprised  at  this 
ardent  description.  However,  she  re- 
flected— and  1  suppose  she  thought  I 
must  he  some  truth  in  it,  though  it  had 
not  struck  her.  Then  she  said,  carelessly, 
"What  was  his  business?" 

"1  think  he  was  in  the  same  way  as 
James  himself." 

'•  Was  his  name  Pinder? — Joseph  Pin- 
der?" 

"  That  or  something.  The  name  was 
new  to  me,  but  Joseph  for  certain." 

"  Well,  if  it  is  Joseph  Pinder,  I  will  ask 
you  not  to  make  acquaintance  with  him. 
You  seem  to  be  making  acquaintances  very 
fast  for  a  woman  in  your  condition." 

"  My  condition,"  said  Deborah.  "  Why, 
that  is  where  it  is — I  can't  bear  to  think. 
I  must  work  or  talk.  It  is  very  unkind  of 
you  to  cast  my  condition  in  my  teeth." 


"  I  didn't  mean  to,  Deb.  There,  forgive 
me." 

"  With  all  my  heart — you  have  got  your 
own  trouble.  Only  give  me  a  reason  why 
am  I  not  to  speak  to  this  Joseph — such  an 
outlandish  name — -this  handsome  Joe." 

"  Well,  then,  one  reason  is,  he  courted 
me  after  a  fashion." 

"Oh,  la!  Is  that  where  the  shoe 
pinches?" 

"  We  used  to  walk  together  like  two  chil- 
dren till  my  man  came;  then  they  quar- 
reled, and  that  Pinder  beat  him,  and  I 
can't  forgive  it,  and  the  first  night  James 
was  quite  overtaken  with  liquor  Pinder 
brought  him  home,  and  it  was  like  a  knife 
to  my  heart." 

••Toor  Sally!  you  saw  you  had  chosen 
the  wrong  one." 

"Chosen  the  wrong  one!"  cried  Sarah, 
contemptuously.  "I  wouldn't  give  my 
James's  little  finger,  drunk  or  sober,  for 
a  thousand  Joseph  Pinders.  There,  it  is 
no  use  talking  to  you.  You  don't  under- 
stand a  word  I  say.  Anyway,  1  do  beg  of 
you  not  to  make  acquaintance  with  the 
man.  nor  ht  him  know  what  passes  in 
this  house.'' 

•■  Why,  of  course  not,  Sally,  if  you  say 
the  word.  What  is  the  man  tome?  Your 
will  is  my  pleasure,  and  your  word  my 
law." 

This,  from  an  elder  sister,  merited  an 
,   and    it   received   a   very   tender 

one. 

A1  last  it  came  to  this,  that  nobody  in 
the  town  who  knew  James  Mansell  would 
employ  him. 

Instead  of  contributing  his  share,  he 
lived  entirely  on  his  wife,  at  home  and 
abroad;  and  he  lived  ill.  So  the  house 
was  divided  against  itself.  The  husband, 
the  bread-wimier  in  theory,  was  doing  all 
he  could  to  ruin  the  family;  two  brave 
women  were  fighting,  tooth  and  nail,  to 
save  it.  They  were  losing  ground  a  little, 
and  that  alarmed  Sarah  terribly ;  but  then 
she  had  a  reserve — sixty  pounds  hidden  in 
an  iron  box,  with  a  good  key.  She  never 
told  her  husband  of  this.  She  hid  it  for 
his  good.  The  box  was  a  small  one,  but 
she  had  it  fastened  with  strong  iron  clamps 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


41 


to  the  wall,  and  she  kept  salables  before  it 
to  hide  it. 

Mansell's  extravagance  she  fed  from  the 
till,  not  without  comments,  grave  and  sor- 
rowful, not  bitter;  yet  they  imbittered  him. 
The  man's  vanity  was  prodigious :  it  equaled 
his  demerit. 

While  the  brave  wife  and  mother  was 
thus  battling  with  undeserved  adversity, 
she  received  a  new  alarm. 

Being  single-handed  in  the  shop,  it  was 
her  way  to  prepare,  with  Deborah's  as- 
sistance, weighed  and  marked  packets  of 
sugar,  tea,  soda,  and  other  things;  and 
one  evening  they  had  taken  a  lump  of 
Irish  butter  out  of  the  tub  and  weighed 
five  pounds,  and  left  it  on  a  slab.  Early 
in  the  morning  a  customer  came  for  a 
pound.  This  was  weighed  off,  and  left 
so  small  a  residue  that  Mrs.  Mansell 
weighed  it,  and  found  there  was  only 
one  pound  and  a  half  left. 

She  could  hardly  believe  her  senses  at 
first,  but  the  weight  was  clear.  She  asked 
Deborah,  with  assumed  carelessness,  how 
much  butter  they  had  weighed  out  last 
night.  Deborah  replied,  without  hesita- 
tion,  "Five  pounds." 

After  that  day  she  looked  more  closely 
into  the  stock,  and  she  detected  losses  and 
diminutions.  One  day  a  slice  off  a  side  of 
bacon;  another,  a  tin  of  preserved  meat; 
in  short,  a  system  of  pilfering.  She  shrank 
from  the  idea  of  theft,  if  it  could  be  ac- 
counted for  in  an3r  other  way.  She  thought 
it  just  possible,  though  not  likely,  that  Deb- 
orah had  made  free  with  these  things  for 
the  use  of  the  house.  She  told  her  what 
she  had  discovered,  and  asked  her  as  deli- 
cately as  possible  whether  she  ever  came 
to  the  shop  for  anything  that  was  wanted 
in  her  kitchen. 

Deborah  went  off  like  a  woman  of  gun- 
powder cross-examined  by  a  torch.  "Me 
take  anything  out  of  your  shop  for  my 
kitchen!" 

"Well,  'tis  my  kitchen  and  all — 'twould 
only  be  from  Peter  to  Paul." 

The  other  was  not  to  be  pacified  so. 
"  Me  take  what  does  not  belong  to  me ! 
Oh,  have  I  liv.ed  to  be  suspected  by  my 
own  sister?     I'd  cut  off  this   arm  sooner 


than  I  would  steal  with  this  hand.  I 
never  wronged  a  creature  of  a  farthing, 
or  a  farthing's  worth,  in  all  my  life. 
Send  me  home.  Send  me  to  the  work- 
house. I  am  not  fit  to  be  trusted — and  so 
many  things  about.  Oh !  oh  !  oh  !  oh !" 
and  down  she  sat  and  rocked. 

"  There !  there !  there !"  cried  Sarah,  com- 
ing swiftly  and  sitting  beside  her.  "  Now 
where  would  have  been  the  harm  if  you 
had  taken  things  for  our  own  use?  And 
oughtn't  I  to  ask  you  before  I  suspected 
something  worse?  Oh,  Deborah,  haven't 
I  trouble  enough  that  you  must  cry  and 
set  me  off  too?  Oh !  oh !  You  might  think 
a  little  of  me  as  well  as  yourself.  Is  it 
nothing  to  you  that  I  am  robbed  and 
all?  Haven't  I  trouble  enough  without 
that?  There,  give  over,  that's  a  dear, 
and  I'll  give  you  a  new  print  this  very 
day." 

Deborah  dried  up  directly,  and  her  senti- 
ments shifted  like  the  wind.  "  I  wish  I 
had  them  that  rob  you,"  said  she,  and  she 
extended  her  great,  long,  powerful  arm 
formidably. 

"  We  must  watch  day  and  night,  dear," 
said  Mrs.  Mansell,  gloomily,  and  with  a 
weary  air,  and  she  took  it  all  to  heart, 
even  the  pain  she  had  given  Deborah, 
whose  mind  was  like  running  water,  and 
retained  no  trace  of  the  dialogue  in  ten 
minutes.  Not  so  the  deeper  nature.  Mrs. 
Mansell  brooded  over  it  all,  and  when  the 
shop  was  shut,  she  sat  in  the  parlor — sat 
and  suffered.  James  Mansell  was  out  as 
usual.  She  sat  and  looked  at  Lucy,  and 
wondered  what  would  be  her  owu  fate 
and  her  child's  at  the  end  of  this  desperate 
struggle.  She  became  hysterical — a  rare 
thing  with  her — and  Deborah  found  her 
trembling  all  over  where  she  sat,  and  quite 
shaken.  She  was  despondent  and  exas- 
perated by  turns.  She  had  twitches  all 
over  her  body,  and  hot  tears  ran  out  of 
her  eyes. 

It  was  a  woman's  breakdown,  and  Deb- 
orah, who  knew  the  female  constitution, 
just  sat  beside  her  and  held  her  hand. 
Sarah  clung  to  this  hand,  and  clutched  it 
every  now  and  then  convulsive^.  She 
spoke  in   broken    sentences.     "Too   many 


42 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


things  against  me;  drunkenness  here; 
theft  there.  It  will  end  in  the  work- 
house! How  else  can  it  end?  I'm  glad 
father's  dead.  Poor  father!  Have  I 
lived  to  say  that?"  The  talkative  De- 
borah said  never  a  word,  so  Sarah  began 
to  calm  down  by  degrees  with  gentle  sighs 
and  tremors. 

Unluckily,  before  she  was  quite  calm, 
Mansell  knocked  at  the  door.  Sarah  could 
tell  his  knock,  or  his  footstep,  or  any  sound 
he  made,  in  a  moment.  Her  face  beamed. 
It  was  early  for  him.  He  was  sober,  and 
she  could  tell  him  of  this  new  trouble. 

Deborah  ran  to  let  him  in.  Sarah  stood 
up  smiling  to  welcome  him. 

He  blundered  into  the  room,  beastly 
drunk,  neckcloth  loose,  eyes  blood-shot; 
he  could  just  keep  on  his  legs. 

Sarah  caught  up  her  child  with  the 
strength  of  a  lioness,  Hung  one  full  and 
fiery  look  of  horror  ami  disgust  right  in 
her  husband's  face,  then  rushed  majesti- 
cally from  the  room,  carrying  her  child 
across  her  arms. 

Drunk  as  he  was,  the  brute  staggered 
under  lliis  tremendous  glance  and  eloquent 
rush.  He  blundered  against  the  mantel- 
piece, and  hung  his  bead. 

Deborah  set  her  arms  akimbo.  "  You've 
done  this  once  too  often,"  she  said,  grimly, 
ami  her  e3"es  glittered  at  him  wickedly. 

"  Mind  your  own  business,"  said  he. 
"Why  did  she  run  away  from  me  like 
thai  ?" 

"Because  of  the  child,  you  may  be  sure. 
There,  don't  let  us  quarrel.  Will  you  have 
your  supper,  now  you  are  here?" 

"I  don't  want  my  supper;  I  want  my 
wife.  You  go  and  fetch  her  directly." 
He  was  excited,  and  Deborah,  determined 
to  keep  the  peace,  took  his  message  to 
Sarah  in  Lucy's  bedroom. 

Sarah  was  shaking  all  over,  and  refused 
to  come.  "  I  dare  not,"  said  she.  "  I  am 
in  such  a  state  I  feel  I  might  say  or  do 
something  I  should  rue  afterward,  for  I 
love  him.  Would  to  God  I  had  never 
seen  him,  but  I  love  him.  Go  you  and 
pacify  him.  I  shall  sleep  here  beside  my 
child." 

Deborah  went  down,  and  found  Mansell 


in  the  armchair,  looking  spiteful.  She 
told  him  Sarah  was  not  well.  She  could 
not  come  down. 

"  Humbug !"  roared  James  Mansell ;  "  she 
is  shamming — I'll  go  and  fetch  her  down;" 
and  he  bounced  up.  Deborah  whipped  be- 
fore the  door.  "Stand  out  of  my  way," 
said  he,  loftily,  and  came  blundering  at 
her.  She  pinned  him  directly  by  the  col- 
lar with  both  hands,  shook  him  to  and  fro 
as  a  dog  does  a  rat,  then  put  both  hands 
suddenly  to  his  breast,  made  a  grand  rush 
forward  with  him,  and  with  the  double 
power  of  her  loins  and  her  great  long  arms 
shot  him  all  across  the  room  into  the  arm- 
chair witli  such  an  impetus  that  the  chair 
went  crashing  against  the  wall,  and  the 
man  in  it  bead  down,  feet  up. 

Mr.  Mansell  stared  dumfounded  at  first. 
He  thought  some  supernatural  power  hail 
disposed  of  him.  He  did  not  allow  for 
suddenness,  and  was  not  aware  that  pull- 
ing and  pushing  go  by  weight,  and  that 
strapping  Deborah,  without  an  ounce  of 
fat,  weighed  two  stone  more  than  he  did, 
owing  to  certain  laws  of  construction  not 
worth  particularizing  it  l<(  frangaise. 

"I  never  lay  my  hand  on  a  woman," 
said  he,  moodily. 

"I'm  not  so  nice,"  replied  I'eborah,  erect, 
with  her  lists  u]>on  her  hips.  "I  can  lay 
my  hands  on  a  man — for  bis  good.  I've 
had  that  much  to  do  afore  now,  and  I 
never  found  one  could  master  me,  bar 
hitting,   which   I  call  that  cowardly." 

Then  as  time  was  up  for  a  change  of 
sentiment  —  eighty  whole  seconds — she 
shifted  to  friendly  advice. 

"Jemmy,  my  man,"  said  she,  "women 
are  curious  creatures.  They  are  not  them- 
selves at  times.  Our  Sally  has  got  the 
nerves.  She  might  fling  a  knife  at  you 
if  you  tormented  her  just  now,  sobbing 
over  her  child.  Take  my  advice,  now, 
that  is  a  friend  to  both  of  you.  Let  her 
a-be.  If  you  don't  upset  her  no  more  to- 
night, which  I  declare  you  shan't,  she'll 
be  as  sweet  as  honey  in  the  morning." 

"She  may,"  said  Mansell  sullenly,  "but 
I  shall  not.  If  she  lies  away  from  me  to- 
night, I'll  lie  away  from  her  a  year  or 
more,  mind  that." 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


43 


"Where?     In  the  union?" 

"No.  That  is  as  much  as  to  say  she 
keeps  me." 

"Well,  and  doesn't  she?  Where  does 
the  money  come  from  you  spend  in 
drink?" 

"  I  have  got  an  offer  of  work." 

"  Work?     It  isn't  under  your  skin." 

"Not  here,  but  this  is  in  America. 
Such  work  as  mine  is  paid  out  there, 
and  I  can  make  my  fortune,  and  not 
have  it  flung  in  my  face  I'm  living  on 
a  woman." 

Deborah  did  not  think  this  gasconade 
worth  replying  to.  She  suggested  repose 
as  the  best  thing  for  him  after  the  hard 
work  he  had  gone  through — lifting  mugs 
and  quarterns  all  the  way  from  the  counter 
to  his  teeth.  With  much  trouble  she  got 
him  up  the  stairs,  and  took  off  his  neck- 
cloth and  loosened  his  shirt  collar.  Then 
she  retired  for  a  reasonable  time,  and  when 
he  was  in  bed  came  and  took  away  the 
candle  from  him  as  she  would  from  a 
child.     He  called  to  her. 

"  Hear  my  last  word." 

"No  such  luck,"  said  she,  dryly. 

"  Hold  your  tongue. " 

"  If  I  hold  my  tongue  I  shall  slobber  my 
teeth." 

"Can  you  listen  a  moment?" 

"  If  I  hold  my  breath." 

"Then  mind  this.  If  she  leaves  me  like 
this,  I'll  leave  her.  I  won't  be  taken  up 
and  put  down  by  any  woman." 

"I'll  tell  her,  my  man,"  said  she,  to 
quiet  him;  then  took  away  his  candle, 
and  went  downstairs  to  her  own  room, 
for  she  slept  on  the  kitchen  floor.  She 
seized  a  feather  bed,  lugged  it  up  the 
stairs,  and  made  up  a  bed  on  the  floor 
for  Sarah.  "He  is  all  right,"  said  she, 
and  not  a  word  more.  Then  she  went 
downstairs,  and  put  her  red  hair  in  curl- 
papers— for  she  was  flirting  all  round  (No. 
1  had  been  dead  six  months) — and  slept 
like  a  stone  upon  a  hard  mattress,  not 
harder  than  her  own  healthy  limbs. 


CHAPTER  III. 

What  wonderful  restoratives  are  a  good 
long  sleep  and  the  dawn  of  day!  They 
co-operate  so,  invigorating  the  body  and 
fortifying  the  mind.  They  clear  away  the 
pain  and  the  forebodings  night  engenders, 
and  brighten  not  only  the  face  of  nature, 
but  our  individual  prospects.  The  glorious 
dawn  falling  upon  our  refreshed  eyes  and 
invigorated  bodies  is  like  a  trumpet  sound- 
ing "Nil  Desperandum."  Mrs.  Mansell 
was  one  of  the  many  whom  sleep  and 
dawn  reinspired  and  reconciled  to  her 
lot  that  morning.  She  had  slept  in  a  pure 
atmosphere,  untarnished  by  a  drunkard's 
breath.  She  awoke  with  her  nerves  com- 
posed and  her  heart  strengthened. 

Her  life  was  to  be  a  battle — that  was 
plain.  But  she  had  forces  and  an  all}'. 
Her  forces  were  rare  health,  strength, 
prudence,  and  sobriety.  Her  ally  was 
Deborah.  She  began  the  battle  this  morn- 
ing brightly  and  hopefully.  She  was  the 
first  up,  and  having  dressed  herself  neatly, 
as  she  always  did.  she  put  on  a  large  apron 
and  bib,  coarse  but  clean,  and  descended 
to  the  parlor.  She  called  up  the  spiral 
staircase,   "  James ! " 

No  answer. 

She  went  into  the  shop  and  called  down 
the  kitchen  stairs.  No  reply  from  her 
sister.  "Lazy-bones,"  said  she.  She 
struck  a  light  in  the  shop,  and  her  eye 
fell  upon  a  large  hand-bell.  She  took  it 
up  and  rang  it  down  the  kitchen  stairs. 
Instantly  there  was  a  sort  of  yawn  of 
distress.  Then  she  bustled  into  the  parlor 
and  rang  it  up  the  spiral  staircase.  Then 
she  set  it  down  and  took  her  candle  into 
the  shop,  and  sorted,  and  dusted,  and 
counted  the  goods,  and  cleaned  the  counter. 

Presently  in  sauntered  Deborah  from  the 
kitchen,  with  her  hair  in  curl-papers,  and 
a  chasm  in  the  upper  part  of  her  gown,  so 
that  she  seemed  half  dislocated ;  and  she 
adhered  to  the  wall  for  support,  and 
sprawled  out  one  long  arm  and  a  hand, 
which  she  flattened  against  the  wall,  to 
hold  on  by  suction  sooner  than  not  at  all. 
"  Here's  a  [yawn]  to  do,"  said  she.  "  Any- 
body's [yawn]  cat  dead?" 


44 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


"No,  but  mine  are  catching  no  mice. 
Nobody  to  light  the  fire  and  give  my  man 
his  breakfast  while  I  open  the  shop.  Aren't 
you  ashamed  of  yourself  ?" 

"Too  sleepy  [yawn]  to  be  ashamed  of 
anything!" 

"Then  wake  up  and  bustle." 

Deborah  gave  herself  a  wriggle  1h.it  set 
her  long  bare  arms  flying  like  windmills, 
and  went  to  work.  The  pair  soon  bright- 
ened the  parlor,  and  then  Sarah  came  into 
the  shop  and  opened  the  door;  but  the  in- 
tent shutters  outside  were  heavy  and  stiff, 
as  she  knew,  so  she  called  1  teborah. 

"You  might  pulldown  those  heavy  shut- 
ters outside  for  me.  You  are  stronger  than 
I  am,  for  all  you  look  like  a  jelly-bag." 

Deborah  drew  back  in  dismay.  "  .Me  go 
into  the  street!     I'm  not  half  dressed." 

"Fine  shapes  don'l  need  fine  clothes. 
You  might  catch  another  husband  on  the 
pavement." 

"  I'd  rather  catch  him  in  church  with 
my  new  bonnet."  Then,  to  escape  any 
more  invitation-  to  publish  her  curl-papers 
— for  that  was  where  the  sin  ie  really  pinched 
—  she  ran  maliciously  into  the  parlor, 
screaming  up  the  corkscr*  ■■•  stairs.  "  Here, 
master!    James  Mansell,you  are  wanted .'" 

"Be  quiet."  said  Sarah,  coloring;  "he  is 
not  vein-  servant.  Them  that  do  it  for  me 
will  be  round  directly.  It  isn't  the  mas- 
ter's business  to  put  up  the  wife's  shut- 
ters." 

"I  think  it  is  then,  if  he  is  a  man,  for  it 
is  a  man's  work." 

Deborah  spoke  this  at  James  Mansell, 
and  at  the  top  of  her  voice.  The  words 
were  hardly  out  of  her  mouth  when  a 
man's  hands  were  seen  to  pull  down  the 
heavy  shutters  and  let  in  the  light. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?"  said  the  ready 
Deborah.  "And  here  is  one  dropped 
from  the  sky  express." 

"Why,  it  is  Joseph  Pinder,"  said  Mrs. 
Mansell,  drawing  back. 

"  La !    Your  old  sweetheart !" 

"Never!  For  shame!  Hold  your 
tongue !" 

Deborah  grinned  with  delight,  and 
whipped  into  the  parlor  to  hide  her  curl- 
papers   and    listen.      Sarah    went   behind 


the  counter  and  minded  her  business. 
She  made  sure  Pinder  would  proceed  on 
his  course  as  soon  as  he  had  done  that 
act  of  courtesy. 

Instead  of  that  he  came  slow!}-  and  a 
little  sheepishly  in  at  the  door,  and  stood 
at  the  counter  opposite  her.  He  was  in  a 
complete  suit  of  white  cotton,  all  but  his 
soft  brown  hat,  and  looked  wonderfully 
neat  and  clean. 

"Good-morning,  Mrs.  Mansell,"  said 
he,   respectfully. 

"Good-morning,  Mr.  Pinder,"  said  Mrs. 
Mansell.  Then,  stiffly,  "Sorry you  should 
take  so  much  trouble." 

Pinder  looked  puzzled,  so,  woman-like, 
she  answered  his  looks : 

"I  mean,  to  take  down  my  shutters.  I 
pay  a  person  express." 

"Oh,  I  heard  somebody  say  it  was  a 
man's  work." 

Sarah  explained,  hurriedly:  "Oh,  that 
was  my  sister." 

"What,  Deborah?" 

"Deborah,"  said  she,  dryly,  in  a  way 
calculated  to  close  the  dialogue.  But  Pin- 
der did  not  move.  He  fumbled  with  his 
hat,  and  at  last  said  ho  was  not  there  by 
accident,  but  had  come  to  see  her. 

"What  for?"  and  she  opened  her  eyes 
rather  wide. 

"  A  little  hit  of  business." 

Sarah  colored,  but  she  said,  dryly, 
"  What  can  I  serve  you?" 

"Oh,  it  is  not  with  you;  it  is  with  j-our 
husband." 

"  Indeed,"  said  she,  rather  incredulously, 
almost  suspiciously. 

"  Got  him  a  job." 

"That  is  very  good  of  you,  I'm  sure," 
was  the  reply,  and  now  the  tone  was  satiri- 
cal.    "  My  husband  has  plenty  of  jobs." 

"Well,  he  used  to  have;  but  the  shop- 
keepers here  are  against  him  now;  they 
say  he  leaves  his  work." 

Sarah  seized  this  opportunity-  to  get  rid 
of  Mr.  Pinder  altogether.  "  Did  you  come 
here  to  run  my  husband  down  to  me?"  she 
inquired,  haughtily. 

"Am  I  one  of  that  sort?"  said  Pinder, 
defiantly.  He  was  beginning  to  take 
offense,   as  well  he   might.     "  I   came   to 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


45 


do   the  man  a  good  turn,  whether  I  get 
any  thanks  for  it  or  not." 

Sarah  colored  and  held  her  peace.  He 
had  taken  the  right  way  with  her  now. 
But  it  was  hard  for  the  good-natured  fel- 
low to  hold  spite,  especially  against  her. 
He  went  naturally  back  to  his  friendly 
manner,  and  told  her  that  the  new  Rectory 
was  being  decorated  by  a  London  firm,  and 
their  grainer  had  been  taken  ill,  and  he 
(Pinder)  had  told  the  foreman  he  knew 
a  tiptop  grainer,  James  Man  Sell,  and  the 
foreman  had  jumped  at  him. 

"  I've  made  the  bargain,  Sarah.  London 
price.  It's  a  thirty  pound  job."  And  he 
looked  proud. 

"  Thirty  pounds !"  exclaimed  Sarah. 
"  Yes;  it  is  a  large  house,  paneled  rooms, 
and  hall,  and  staircase,  all  to  be  grained, 
besides  the  doors  and  shutters  and  skirt- 
ings.    Only    mind,    these   swell    London 
tradesmen    won't    stand  —  unpunctuality. 
Where  is  he,  if  you  please?" 
"  Oh,  he  is  at  home." 
"  Then  let  me  see  him  directly." 
"You  can't  just  now." 
Deborah,    who    had    listened    to  every 
word,  chose  this  moment  to  emerge  from 
the   parlor.      She  had  utilized   her  curl- 
papers by  lighting  the  fire  with  them,  and 
came  out  very  neat  in  a  charming  cap,  and 
courtesied.     "Give  him  half  an  hour,  Mr. 
Pinder,"  said  she,  sweetly;  "he  is  in  bed." 
Pinder  looked  at  his  watch,  and  said  he 
could  not  wait  half  an  hour;  he  was  due; 
but  he  wrote  a  line  with   his  pencil  for 
Mansell  to  give  to  the  foreman;  then  he 
put  on  his  cap  and  said  jauntily,  "  Good- 
morning,  ladies." 

"  Good  -  morning,  sir,"  said  Deborah, 
graciously. 

"And  thank  you,  Joseph,"  said  Sarah, 
gently. 

"  You  are  very  welcome ;  I  suppose  jon 
know  that,"  said  he,  as  bluntly  as  he  could. 
When  he  was  gone,  Sarah's  artificial  in- 
difference disappeared  with  a  vengeance. 
She  ran  into  the  parlor,  and  screamed  up 
the  spiral  staircase,  "  James !  James !  Such 
good  news !    Get  up  and  come  down  direct- 

ly!" 

"All  right,"  said  a  sleepy  voice. 


Then  she  turned  on  Deborah.  "And 
what  call  had  you  to  say  he  was  in  bed?" 

"Oh,  the  truth  may  be  blamed,  but  it 
can't  be  shamed,"  was  Deborah's  steady 
reply. 

Proverbs  being  unanswerable,  Sarah 
changed  the  subject.  "  And  if  you  haven't 
got  on  my  new  cap!" 

Deborah  had  no  by-word  read}- to  justify 
misappropriation  of  another  lady's  cap;  so 
she  took  a  humble  tone.  "La,  Sally,  I 
couldn't  help  it!  he  was  such  a  nice  young 
man.  You  can't  abide  him,  but  tastes 
they  differ.  Do  you  think  he  will  come 
again?  If  he  does,  I  really  must  set  my 
cap  at  him." 

"  But  not  mine;"  and  Sarah,  who  was 
in  rare  spirits,  whipped  her  cap  in  a  mo- 
ment off  her  sister's  head. 

"La!  you  needn't  to  take  my  hair  and 
all,"  whined  Deborah.  "  That's  my  own, 
anyway." 

"  Then  you  are  not  in  the  fashion,"  was 
the  ready  reply.  "Come,  Deb,  enough 
chat;  this  is  a  busy  morniug,  and  a  happy 
morning  to  make  us  forget  last  night  for- 
ever. Now,  dear,  run,  and  make  my  man 
his  coffee — nice  and  strong." 

"I  will." 

"  And  clean  his  boots  for  going  out." 

"If  I  must,  I  must,"  said  Deborah,  with 
sudden  languor.  She  never  could  see  why 
women  should  clean  men's  boots. 

"  And  air  him  a  shirt." 

"Is  that  all?"  inquired  Deborah,  affect- 
ing surprise. 

"All  at  present,"  said  the  mistress, 
dryly. 

"  What,  hasn't  he  any  hose  to  darn,  nor 
hair  to  be  cut,  nor  teeth  to  be  cleaned  for 
him?" 

"You  go  on  with  your  cheek,"  and  she 
threatened  Deborah,  merrily,  with  a  duster. 
Her  heart  was  light.  And  now  a  customer 
or  two  trickled  in  at  intervals.  She  served 
them  promptly  and  civilly. 

Presently  she  saw  her  husband  coming 
slowly  down  the  spiral  staircase.  She  ran 
into  the  parlor  to  meet  him.  Not  a  word 
about  last  night,  but  welcomed  him  with 
smiles  and  a  long  kiss. 

"Good  news,  dear,"  said  she,  jubilant. 


46 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


He  received  her  with  discouraging 
languor.     "Well,  what  is  up?" 

But  she  was  not  to  be  disheartened  so 
easily.  "  Why,  Jemmy  dear,  there's  a 
job  waiting  for  you  at  the  Rectory,  and 
you  are  to  have  thirty  pounds  for  it." 

"Thirty  pounds!  That  will  be  a  long 
job." 

She  tossed  her  head  a  little  at  that. 
"Why  a  long  job?  It  is  not  day  work. 
It  shouldn't  be  a  long  job  if  I  had  it  to 
do,  and  was  as  clever  as  you  are.  Come, 
here's  Deborah  with  your  coffee  and  nice 
hot  toast.  Eat  your  breakfast  and  start. 
No,  don't  take  it  into  the  parlor,  Deb,  to 
waste  more  time;  set  it  down  hereon  the 
flap.     I  do  love  to  see  him  eat." 

Mr.  Mansell,  thus  stimulated,  put  the 
coffee  to  his  lips.  But  he  set  it  down 
untasted,   and  said  lie  couldn't. 

"Try,  dear;  'twill  do  you  good." 

"I  can't,  Sally;  I  am  wry  ill;  my  head 
swims  so,  and  my  chest  is  mi  lire.  Oh!" 
and  Mr.  Mansell  leaned  on  tin'  end  of  the 
counter  and  groaned  aloud.  He  made  so 
much  of  his  disease  that  Sarah  was 
alarmed,  and  told  Deborah  to  run  for  the 
doctor. 

That  personage  Btood  Btock-still,  ami  as 
ostentatiously  calm  as  the  invalid  was  de- 
monstrative in  his  sufferings.  "  A  doctor! 
Why,  he'd  make  the  man  ill."  She  folded 
her  arms  and  contemplated  the  victim. 
"Hot  coppers,"  said  she.  "  He  only  wants 
a  hair  of  the  dog  that  bit  him."  This  with 
a  composure  that  befitted  the  occasion  ;  bul 
it  was  not  so  received.  "  How  dare  you !" 
cried  Sarah. 

"Yes,  Deb,  for  mercy's  sake,"  moaned 
the  sufferer — "for  mercy's  sake,  a  drop  of 
brandy  !" 

Deborah  would  have  gone  for  it  directly 
if  she  had  been  mistress,  but,  as  it  was,  she 
consulted  her  sister  by  the  eye. 

Sarah  replied  to  that  look  with  great  de- 
cision. "  Not  if  you  are  any  sister  of  mine. 
Ay,  that  is  the  way  of  it — drink  to  be  ill, 
and  then  drink  to  be  well;  and  once  you 
have  begun,  go  on  till  you  are  ill  again, 
and  want  a  drop  to  start  you  again  on  the 
road  to  beggary  and  shame.  Drink,  drink, 
drink,   in   a   merry  -  go  -  round  that  never 


halts."  Then,  firmly:  "  You  drink  your 
coffee  without  more  words,  and  then  go 
and  work  for  your  daughter  like  a  man. 
Come!" 

She  held  the  cup  out  to  him  with  a  fine 
air  of  authority,  though  her  heart  was 
quaking  all  the  time,  and  he,  being  just 
then  in  a  subdued  condition,  took  it  re- 
signedly, and  sipped  a  little.  Then  a  cus- 
tomer came  in,  but  Sarah  was  not  to  be 
diverted  from  her  purpose.  She  ordered 
Deborah  to 'stand  there  and  see  him  drain 
every  drop.  Deborah  folded  her  bare  arms 
and  inspected  the  process  loftily  but  keenly. 
He  got  through  two-thirds  of  the  contents, 
then  showed  her  the  balance  with  such 
a  piteous  look  that  she  had  compassion, 
stretched  out  her  long  arm  for  the  cup, 
sent  the  contents  down  her  throat  with  one 
gesture,  and  returned  the  cup  with  another 
gesture,  half  regal,  half  vulgar,  all  in  two 
seconds,  and  James,  with  admirable  rapid- 
ity, set  the  cup  down  empty  under  Sarah's 
eye,  and  so  they  abused  her  confidence. 

"  Well  done,"  said  she;  "  strong  coffee  is 
an  antidote,  they  say,  and  work  is  another. 
Off  you  go  to  the  Rectory,  and  work  till 
one.  Deborah  will  have  a  idee  hot  dinner 
ready  for  you  by  then."  She  found  him 
his  basket  and  his  brushes,  all  cleaned  by 
herself,  though  he  had  left  them  foul. 

At  this  last  trait  a  gleam  of  gratitude 
shot  into  his  skull.  He  said,  "Well,  3-ou 
are  the  right  sort.  It  is  some  pleasure  to 
work  for  you." 

"And  our  child,"  said  she.  "Think  of 
us  both  when  you  think  of  one.  Oh, 
Jemmy,  dear!  if  you  should  ever  be 
tempted  again,  do  but  ask  yourself 
whether  them  that  tempt  you  to  your 
ruin  love  you  as  well  as  we  do." 

"Say  no  more,  Sally;  I'll  turn  a  new 
leaf.  Here,  give  me  a  kiss  over  the  coun- 
ter." So  they  had  a  long  conjugal  em- 
brace over  the  counter. 

Deborah  looked  on,  and  said  in  her  way, 
"  Makes  my  mouth  water,  being  a  widder." 

"There,"  said  James  Mansell,  turning  to 
go.  "  I'll  never  touch  a  drop  again  until  I 
have  chucked  that  thirty  pounds  into  your 
lap,  my  girl."  With  this  resolve  he  left 
the  shop. 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


47 


Sarah  must  come  round  the  corner  and 
watch  him  down  the  street;  then  she 
turned  at  the  door,  and  beamed  all  over, 
and  her  eyes  sparkled.  "  God  bless  him  !" 
she  cried.  "  There  isn't  a  better  workman, 
nor  a  better  husband,  nor  a  better  man,  in 
Britain,  only  keep  him  from  drink.  Now 
is  there?" 

"  La,  Sarah !  how  can  I  tell  ?  I  never  saw 
him  sober  six  days  running;  but  I  have 
heard  you  say  he  used  to  be  a  good  hus- 
band. And  why  not  again,  if  he  do  but 
keep  his  word?" 

"  And  he  will ;  he  is  not  the  man  to 
break  his  word,  far  less  his  oath.  He 
turns  over  a  new  leaf  to-day,  and  I'm  a 
happy  woman  once  more." 

"And  I'll  have  his  dinner  ready  to  the 
moment. " 

Deborah  dived  into  the  kitchen,  and  was 
heard  the  next  moment  working  and  whist- 
ling tunes  of  a  cheerful  character.  No 
blacksmith  or  plow-boy  could  beat  this 
rustic  dame  at  that. 

Mrs.  Mansell  was  soon  occupied  at  the 
counter.  A  cook  came  in,  and  bought 
three  pounds  of  bacon  at  Sd.  the  pound 
for  her  mistress,  and  ditto  of  best  Lim- 
erick at  llcZ.  for  the  kitchen;  these  prices 
to  be  reversed  in  her  housekeeping  book. 
She  also  paid  the  week's  bill,  and  de- 
manded her  perquisite.  Sarah  submitted, 
and  gave  her  half  a  crown,  or  her  mistress 
would  have  shopped  elsewhere  under  her 
influence.  Then  came  a  maid-of-all-work 
for  a  packet  of  black-lead,  seven  pounds  of 
soda,  two  of  sugar,  a  bar  of  soap,  and  some 
"  connubial"  blacking.  Sarah  said  she  was 
out  of  that.  The  slavey  replied,  with  the 
usual  attention  to  grammar,  "Oh,  yes  you 
do.     Mrs.  White's  servant  buys  it  here." 

"Oh,  that's  Nubian  blacking." 

"Well,  and  that's  what  I  want;  saves  a 
vast  o'  trouble." 

Others  came,  child  customers,  some  only 
just  up  to  the  counter,  and  many  of  them 
mute.  These  showed  their  coppers,  and 
Sarah  had  to  divine  the  rest.  But  she  had 
a  rare  eye  for  them ;  she  looked  keenly  at 
each  mite,  and  knew  what  they  wanted  by 
their  faces  and  their  coin.  She  gave  one 
a  screw  of  tobacco  for  father,  another  a 


candle  with  paper  wrapped  round  the  mid- 
dle, another  an  ounce  of  candy.  But  as  it 
drew  near  one  there  was  a  lull  in  trade, 
and  savory  smells  came  up  from  the 
kitchen.  The  good  wife  must  have  a 
finger  in  her  husband's  dinner.  She 
locked  the  shop  door  and  ran  down  to 
the  kitchen  fire,  and  when  it  had  struck 
one,  and  everything  was  done  to  a  turn, 
she  ran  up  again  and  unlocked  the  door 
and  laid  a  clean  cloth  in  the  little  parlor, 
and  had  Lucy  there  very  neat,  that  no 
attraction  might  be  wanting  to  her  con- 
verted husband  and  workman  on  his  re- 
turn to  his  well-earned  meal. 

By-and-by  Deborah  looked  in  with  cheeks 
as  red  as  her  hair  to  say  the  steak  would 
spoil  if  not  eaten. 

"But  you  mustn't  let  it  spoil,"  objected 
Sarah,  loftily.  "He  won't  be  long  now." 
Then,  with  delight,  "Here  he  is,"  for  a 
man's  figure  darkened  the  door.  "No; 
it's  only  Joseph   Pinder. " 

Joseph  Pinder  it  was,  and  for  once  looked 
morose.  He  had  a  tin  can  with  a  narrovv- 
ish  neck  in  his  hand,  and  put  it  down  on 
the  counter  with  some  noise,  as  much  as 
to  say,  "  This  time  I  am  a  customer  and 
nothing  more."  Mrs.  Mansell  received  him 
as  such,  went  behind  the  counter  directly, 
and  leaned  a  little  over,  awaiting  his  orders. 

"  Half  a  gallon  of  turps,"  said  he,  almost 
rudely.  Mrs.  Mansell  went  meekly  and 
filled  his  can  from  a  little  tank  with  a 
tap. 

But  Deborah,  who  never  read  books,  al- 
ways read  faces.  She  scanned  Pinder,  and 
said,  "  You  seem  put  out.  Is  there  any- 
thing the   matter?" 

"  Plenty  "  said  he ;  "  more  than  I  like  to 
tell.  But  she  must  know  it  sooner  or  later. 
Serves  me  right,  anyway,  for  recommend- 
ing a — " 

He  stopped  in  time,  and  turned  away 
from  Sarah  to  Deborah,  and  said,  bitter- 
ly, "  He  never  came  to  work  at  all.  He 
fell  in  with  a  tempter  in  this  very  street, 
and  got  enticed  away  directly." 

Sarah  raised  her  hands  in  dismay,  and 
uttered  not  a  word,  but  an  inarticulate  cry 
of  distress  so  eloquent  of  amazement  and 
dismaj"  that  Pinder's  anger  gave  way  to 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


pity,  and  he  began  all  of  a  sudden  to  make 
excuses  for  the  offender,  and  lay  the  blame 
on  Dick  Varney,  a  dangerous  villain  with 
a  cajoling  tongue,  a  pickpocket's  fingers, 
and  a  heart  of  stone.  He  turned  to  Sarah 
uow,  and  enlarged  on  this  villain's  vices. 
Said  he  had  been  in  prison  twice,  and  it 
was  he  who  was  ruining  James  Mansell. 

But  Sarah  interrupted  all  this.  "  Never 
mind  him.     Where  is  my  poor  husband V" 

"At  the  'Chequers,'  my  mate  says." 

"Give  me  my  shawl  and  bonnet,  Debo- 
rah." 

"  What  to  do?"  inquired  Finder,  un- 
easily. 

"To  fetch  him  away,"  was  the  dogged 
reply. 

Then  at  last  the  long-hidden  truth  came 
out.  "Oh,  it  will  not  be  the  first  time  I 
have  gone  to  a  public-house,  and  stood 
their  jeers  and  his  drunken  anger  for  an 
hour  or  two.  and  brought  him  home  at 
last.  He  has  sworn  at  me  before  them 
all,  but  he  never  stniek  me  Perhaps  that 
is  to  come.  I  think  it  will  come  fco-day, 
for  he  was  more  violent  last  night  than 
ever  I  knew  him  to  be  1  don't  care;  I'll 
have  him  home  if  I  die  for  it." 

"Not  from  the  'Chequers,'  you  won't. 
You  don't  know  the  place;  there  are  bad 
women  there  as  well  as  bad  men.  Why, 
it's  a  boozing  ken  for  thieves  and  their 
jades.  Take  a  man  away  from  them ! 
They  would  soil  your  ears  and  make 
your  flesh  creep,  and  perhaps  mark  your 
face  forever.  You  stay  beside  your  sis- 
ter. I  must  go  on  with  it  now.  I'll 
strike  work  at  dinner-time,  for  once  in 
my  life,  and  I'll  bring  your  man  home." 

This  melted  both  the  sister-.  Sarah  most, 
who  had  been  so  cold  to  her  old  lover.  "  Oh, 
thank  you  !  bless  you,  Joseph,"  she  sobbed. 

"Don't  cry,  Sally,"  said  the  honest  fel- 
low, in  a  broken  voice ;  "  pray  don't  cry ; 
I  can't  bear  to  see  you  cry,"  and  he  almost 
burst  out  of  the  place  for  fear  he  should 
break  down  himself,  or  say  something 
kinder  than  he  ought.  His  boy  was 
waiting  outside;  be  sent  him  in  for  the 
turps,  and  ordered  him  to  tell  the  foreman 
to  dock  his  afternoon  time;  he  was  gone 
to  look  after  the  grainer. 


He  went  down  to  the  "Chequers,"  and 
got  there  just  in  time  to  find  Mansell  quar- 
reling with  three  blackguards  in  the  skittle- 
ground.  Indeed,  before  he  could  interfere, 
one  of  them  gave  the  drunken  man  a  severe 
blow  on  the  nose,  that  made  him  bleed  like 
a  pig.  The  next  moment  the  aggressor  lay 
flat  on  his  back,  felled  by  Joe  Pinder.  The 
other  two  sparred  up,  but  went  down  like 
nine-pins  before  that  long  muscular  arm, 
shot  out  straight  from  the  shoulder.  Then 
he  seized  Mansell,  and  said,  "The  villains 
have  hurt  you;  come  and  be  cured."  And 
so,  not  giving  him  time  to  think,  he  half 
coaxed,  half  pushed  him  out  of  the  place, 
and  got  him  on  the  road  home. 

Meantime  Sarah  sat  sorrowful,  and  said 
her  happy  day  was  soon  ended,  and  she 
wished  her  lite  was  ended  too.  Deborah 
sat  beside  her,  and  tried  to  comfort  her. 

"One  good  thing."  said  she,  "you  have 
got  a  friend  now.  when  most  wanted,  and 
a  'friend  in  need  is  a  friend  indeed.'  And 
to  think  you  had  the  offer  of  Joseph 
Tinder  and  could  go  and  take  James 
Mansell!" 

Sarah  drew  up.  "And  would  again," 
said  she,  "with  all  his  faults.  I  would 
not  give  him  for  Joe  Pinder,  nor  any  other 
man." 

"  Well,  that's  a  good  job.  as  you  are  tied 
to  him."  remarked  Deborah. 

"Do  you  think  Joseph  will  bring  him 
home?" 

"  ll  any  man  can.  I  think  ever  so  much 
of  that  chap." 

"Then  don't  let  the  dinner  spoil,  at  all 
events." 

Deborah  didn't  trust  herself  to  speak. 
She  got  up  resigned^  to  attend  to  the 
possible  wants  of  this  deserving  husband. 
Sarah  divined  that  it  cost  her  a  struggle, 
and  tried  to  gild  the  pill. 

"You  are  a  good  sister  to  me,"  said  she. 

"That  I  am,"  said  Deborah,  frankly. 
"But  so  are  you  to  me;  and  I  was  always 
as  fond  of  you  as  a  cow  is  of  her  calf." 

"And  I  haven't  forgot  the  print."  said 
Mrs.  Mansell;  "but  you  see  how  I  have 
been  put  about.  I  mustn't  go  to  my  safe 
even  for  you,  but  there's  half  a  sovereign 
in  the  till,  and  you  shall  have  it^efore 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


49 


some  fresh  trouble  comes  to  make  me  for- 
get." 

Deborah's  eyes  sparkled,  but  she  said  it 
wasn't  a  fit  time,  there  Were  too  many  suck- 
ing at  her. 

"And  that  is  true;  but  they  can't  drain 
me.  Don't  tell  a  soul;  I  make  a  deal  of 
money  in  this  little  shop.  I  wouldn't  give 
my  Saturda3's  for  £5  apiece."  Then,  al-. 
most  in  a  whisper,  "  I've  got  sixty  pounds 
put  by  in  that  safe  there,  and  the  safe  fast- 
ened to  the  wall.  I  mustn't  touch  that 
money,  'tis  for  my  darling  Lucy.  But 
there's  an  odd  half-sovereign  in  the  till, 
and  it  is  for  you.  There  are  some  beau- 
ties at  Coverley's  over  the  way."  Dress, 
having  once  been  mentioned,  was  of  course 
the  dominant  substantive.  While  she  was 
speaking,  she  took  out  her  keys  and  opened 
the  till.  There  was  much  less  silver  in  it 
than  she  expected  to  find.  She  put  both 
hands  in,  and  turned  it  all  over  in  a  mo- 
ment. There  was  no  half-sovereign.  "Come 
here !  come  here !"  she  screamed ;  "  the  till 
has  been  robbed." 

"La,  Sarah!"  cried  Deborah — -"never!" 

"But  I  say  it  has;  there's  not  a  shilling 
here  but  what  I  have  taken  to-day." 

"When  did  you  look  last?" 

"  Yester  e'en  at  six,  and  counted  half  a 
sovereign  and  eighteen  shillings  in  silver. 
What  will  become  of  me  now?  There  are 
thieves  about.  Heaven  knows  how  the 
goods  go,   but  this  is  some  man's  work." 

"  Then  I  wish  I  had  him,"  said  Deborah, 
and  she  thrust  out  her  great  arms  and  long 
sinewy  fingers.  The  words  were  scarcely 
out  of  her  lips,  and  the  formidable  fingers 
still  extended  knuckles  downward,  when 
James  Mansell,  his  shirt  and  trousers  cov- 
ered with  blood,  was  thrust  in  at  the  door 
by  Joseph  Pinder:  his  own  white  dress 
had  suffered  by  the  contact. 

Both  women  screamed  at  sight  of  him, 
and  Sarah  cried,  "  Oh,  they  have  murdered 
him !" 

Pinder  said,  hastily,  "No,  no,  he's  none 
the  worse — only  a  bloody  nose." 

"Then  he  is  cheap  served,"  said  Debo- 
rah. 

"Ay,  but  let  me  tell  you  I  came  just  in 
time;  there  were  three  of  them  on  to  him." 


"Oh,"  cried  Sarah,  "the  cowards!" 

Mr.  Mansell  caught  at  the  word  "cow- 
ards."    Cried  he,  "  Let's  go  and  fight  'em." 

"Not  if  I  know  it,"  said  Pinder,  stop- 
ping his  rush,  and  holding  him  like  a  vise. 

"What,  are  you  turned  coward  and  all? 
Look  here,  he  knocked  'em  all  three  down 
like  nine-pins." 

"Then  there  let  'em  lie,"  said  this  ra- 
tional hero. 

"  I  shan't,"  said  the  irrational  one.  "  I'll 
go  and  just  kick  'em  up  again,  and  then — " 

But  the  next  process  was  not  revealed, 
because  in  illustrating  the  first  Mr.  Man- 
sell  sat  down  on  the  floor  with  a  heavy 
bump,  and  had  to  be  picked  up  by  Pinder 
and  lectured.  "  What  you  want  just  now 
is  not  more  fighting,  but  a  wash,  and  then 
a  sleep." 

Sarah  proposed  an  amendment — "  What 
he  wants  most,  Mr.  Pinder,  is  a  heart  and 
a  conscience." 

"  Is  that  all?"  said  the  impenitent. 

Deborah  giggled.  But  Mr.  Mansell  had 
better  have  kept  his  humor  for  a  less  seri- 
ous situation.  The  much  enduring  wife 
turned  upon  him   the  moment  he   spoke. 

"  After  all  you  promised  and  swore  to 
me  this  day.  Good  work  and  good  money 
brought  to  your  hand  by  one  we  had  no 
claim  on,  either  you  or  I ;  a  good  home  to 
come  to,  a  good  dinner  cooked  with  loving 
hands,  and  a  good  wife  and  daughter  that 
counted  the  minutes  till  they  could  see  you 
eating  it.  What  are  you  made  of?  You 
are  neither  a  husband,  nor  a  father,  nor  a 
man." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

"  Hold  your  tongue !"  roared  the  culprit. 

But  her  blood  was  fairly  up,  and  instead 
of  flinching  from  him  she  came  at  him  like 
a  lioness. 

"  No ;  I  have  held.my  tongue  long  enough, 
and  screened  your  faults, and  hid  my  trouble 
from  the  world.    What  right  have  such  men 


50 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


as  you  to  marry  and  get  children  that  they 
hate,  and  would  beggar  if  they  could,  as 
well  as  their  miserable  wives?"  She  put 
her  hand  suddenly  to  her  forehead  as  a 
keen  pain  shot  through  it.  "  He  will  drive 
me  wild.  If  you  are  a  sister  of  mine,  take 
him  out  of  my  sight."  She  stamped  her 
foot  on  the  ground,  and  her  eyes  flashed. 
"D'ye  hear?  Take  him  out  of  m}-  sight 
before  my  heart  bursts  my  bosom,  and  I 
curse  the  hour  I  ever  saw  him." 

Deborah  had  bundled  him  into  the  parlor 
before  this  climax  came,  and  she  now  gut 
him  out  of  sight  altogether,  saying,  "  Come, 
Jemmy — 'A  wise  man  never  faces  an  angry 
woman.'  " 

As  for  Sarah,  she  sank  down  upon  a  seat, 
languid  and  limp;  and  after  the  thunder 
the  rain. 

Pinder,  with  instinctive  good-breeding, 
had  turned  to  go.  But  now  he  couldn't. 
The  woman  be  had  always  loved,  and  who 
had  given  him  so  much  pain,  sat  quietly 
weeping,  as  one  who  could  no  longer  strug- 
gle. He  looked  at  her,  and,  to  use  the 
expressive  words  of  Scripture,  his  bowels 
yearned  over  her.  He  did  not  know  what 
he  could  say  to  do  her  any  good,  yet  lie 
couldn't  go  without  trying.  He  said,  gen- 
tly, "Don't  despair;  while  there's  life 
there's  hope." 

She  shook  her  head  sadly,  and  said. 
gently,  "There's  none  for  me  now." 

"Oh.  yes;  if  that  Vamey  could  be  got 
out  of  the  way,  he  would  listen  to  reason. 
He  is  the  wicked  one;  your  man  is  only 
weak." 

"Where's  the  odds  if  they  do  the  same 
thing?  But  it  is  very  good  of  you  to 
make  excuses  for  him." 

She  then  took  out  a  white  pocket-hand- 
kerchief and  meekly  dried  her  eyes;  then 
she  stood  up  and  said,  in  a  grave,  thought- 
ful way,  which  he  recognized  as  her  old 
manner,   "Let  me  look  at  you." 

She  took  a  step  toward  him,  but  he  did 
not  move  toward  her.  On  the  contrary, 
he  stood  there  and  fidgeted,  and  when  she 
looked  full  at  him  he  hung  down  his  head 
a  little. 

" Nay,  look  at  me,"  said  she;  " you  have 
done  naught  to  be  ashamed  of. " 


Being  so  challenged,  he  did  look  at  her, 
but  not  so  full  as  she  did  at  him.  It  was 
a  peculiarity  of  this  woman  that  she  could 
gaze  into  a  man's  face  without  either  seem- 
ing bold  or  feeling  ashamed.  She  never 
took  her  eye  off  Pinder's  face  during  the 
whole  dialogue  which  follows.  Said  she, 
slowly  and  thoughtfully,  and  her  eye  perus- 
ing him  all  the  time,  "  You  must  be  a  very 
good  young  man.  Years  ago  you  courted 
mo  honorably,  and  I  was  barely  civil  to 

Pinder  said,  gently,  "You  never  de- 
ceived me." 

"  No,  but  I  never  valued  you.  Now  that 
I  am  older,  I  have  noticed  that  for  a  woman 
to  refuse  a  man  makes  him  as  bitter  as  gall. 
Dear  heart,  do  but  wound  his  vanity,  and 
bis  love,  such  as  'tis,  turns  to  spite  direct- 
ly; but  instead  of  that  you  have  always 
spoken  respectful  of  me,  for  it  has  come 
round  to  my  ears;  and  you  have  held  aloof 
from  me,  and  that  was  wise  and  proper, 
till  you  saw  I  was  in  trouble,  and  then  you 
came  to  me  to  do  me  a  good  turn  in  the 
right  way,  through  my  unfortunate  hus- 
band. You  are  one  of  a  thousand,  and 
may  God  reward  you!" 

By  this  time  Finder's  eyes  had  grad- 
ually sunk  to  the  ground  before  the  calm 
gaze  and  the  intelligent  praise  of  one  who 
was  still  very  dear  to  him. 

"  Have  you  don.-?"  said  he,  dryly,  in- 
specting the  floor. 

"  Yes,"  said  she;  "I  have  thought  my 
thought  and  said  my  say." 

"Well,  I  should  like  to  tell  you  some- 
thing. It  makes  a  man  better  to  love  a 
good  woman,  even  if  he  can't  win  her  and 
wear  her.  I  studied  you  when  you  were 
a  maid,  and  it  set  me  against  a  many' vul- 
gar vices.  I  have  had  my  eye  on  you  since 
you  were  a  wife,  and  that  has  made  me 
respect  you  still  more,  and  respect  virtue. 
You  have  a  dangerous  enemy  in  that  Dick 
Varney.  Against  him  you  want  a  friend. 
I  seem  to  feel  somehow  as  if  I  was  called 
upon  to  be  that  friend,  and  I  do  assure  you, 
Sarab,  that  I  am  not  so  unreasonable  as  I 
was  when  the  disappointment  was  fresh. 
I  should  have  been  downright  happy  to- 
day  if  things  had    gone  to  yenr   mind. 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


51 


After  all,  the  day  isn't  over  j-et,  and 
I've  struck  work.  Is  there  nothing  I  can 
do  Drink  and  Dick  Varney  can't  spoil, 
confound  them?" 

Thus  urged,  and  being  beset  with 
troubles,  and  feeling  already  the  rare 
comfort  and  support  of  a  male  friend, 
she  confessed  she  had  another  trouble — 
a  small  one,  comparatively,  but  not  a 
small  one  on  the  top  of  the  others.  She 
was  being  robbed.  She  told  him  all  about 
it,  and  with  a  workman's  quickness  he 
asked  to  see  the  lock  of  the  till. 

He  examined  this  closely,  and  detected  at 
once,  by  abrasions  in  the  metal,  that  it  had 
been  opened  with  a  picklock,  not  a  key.  He 
told  her  so,  and  she  said  she  was  none  the 
wiser. 

"I  am,  though,"  said  he.  "It  shows 
that  nobody  in  the  house  has  done  it.  It's 
professional.  I  should  not  wonder  if  this 
was  Varney  and  all.  Why  he's  an  old 
hand  at  this  game,  and  has  been  in  trouble 
for  no  other  thing.  Does  he  ever  come  into 
your  shop?" 

"  He  may.     I  don't  know  him  by  sight." 

Pi nder  reflected.  "James  Mansell  tells 
him  everything,  you  may  be  sure,  and  it's 
just  like  the  scoundrel  to  steal  in  here  and 
rob  the  wife  at  home,  and  ruin  the  husband 
abroad." 

Then  he  thought  again,  and  presently 
slapped  his  thigh  with  satisfaction,  for  he 
thought  he  saw  a  way  to  turn  all  this  to 
profit. 

"  If  we  can  oidy  catch  that  Varney,  and 
give  him  five  years  penal — it  won't  be  less, 
being  an  old  offender — Mansell  will  lose  his 
tempter,  and  then  he'll  listen  to  you  and 
me,  strike  drink,  go  in  for  work,  and  be 
a  much  happier  man,  and  you  a  happy 
woman." 

"  Oh,  these  are  comforting  words !  "  said 
poor  Sarah.  "  But  how  am  I  to  catch  the 
villain?" 

"  Others  must  do  that.  You  go  to  the 
police  station,  see  the  superintendent,  and 
make  your  complaint.  I'll  come  after  you, 
and  talk  to  Mr.  Steele,  the  detective ;  he  is 
a  friend  of  mine,  and  we  will  soon  know 
all  about  it.  A  drunken  thief  is  as  leaky 
as  the  rest.     But  you  must  keep  your  own 


counsel ;  your  sister  has  a  good  heart,  but 
she  is  a  chatterbox,  and  out  every  evening 
in  half  a  dozen  houses.  I  don't  like  to 
go  with  you,  because  of  the  blood  on  my 
clothes;  but  if  you  will  start  at  once,  I 
will  change  my  coat  and  join  you  at  the 
station,  and  bring  you  back." 

Sarah  carried  out  these  instructions  with 
her  usual  fidelity.  She  ascertained  that  her 
husband  was  lying  fast  asleep  upon  the  bed ; 
she  put  on  her  shawl  and  bonnet,  confided 
Lucy  and  the  shop  to  Deborah,  and  when 
the  latter  asked  where  she  was  going,  said, 
dryly,  "There  and  back."  With  that  she 
vanished. 

"There,  now,"  said  Deborah,  "I  owe 
that  to  you,  Mr.  Pinder." 

"  How  so?" 

"  When  they  have  got  a  nice  young  man 
to  tell  their  minds  to,  they  don't  waste 
words  on  a  sister." 

"Well,  you  needn't  grudge  me,"  said 
he.  "  It's  five  years  since  she  spoke  a 
word  to  me."  So  then  he  retired  in  his 
turn,  and  Deborah  had  only  the  customers 
and  little  Lucy  to  talk  to. 

The  customers  of  this  little  shop,  accus- 
tomed to  the  grave,  modest  Sarah,  must 
have  been  a  little  surprised  at  the  humors 
of  her  substitute. 

The  first  to  be  astonished  was  a  game- 
keeper. He  came  in  spruce,  in  velveteen 
jacket  and  leathern  gaiters,  from  the  coun- 
try. He  stared  at  Deborah,  none  the  less 
that  she  happened  just  then  to  be  whistling 
a  poacher's  song. 

"  Why,  where's  the  mistress?"  said  he. 

"  Gone  after  the  master." 

"  And  where's  the  master?" 

"Gone  before  the  mistress." 

"I  want  a  pound  o'  powder." 

"Well,  money  will  buy  it.  What  pow- 
der? Emery  powder,  putty  powder,  violet 
powder?" 

"  No,  gunpowder,  to  be  sure." 

Deborah  recoiled.  "I  wouldn't  touch  it 
for  a  pension." 

The  gamekeeper  laughed.  "  Well,"  said 
he,  "you  are  a  pretty  shop-woman." 

"Oh,  sir,"  said  Deborah,  coquettishly, 
"and  I'm  sure  you  are  a  beautiful  game- 
keeper." 


52 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


He  took  a  considerable  time  to  compre- 
hend this  retort;  when  he  had  mastered 
the  difficulty,  he  said,  "  Well,  let  us  trade. 
You'll  beat  me  at  talk.  Powder  isn't 
loose;  it's  in  a  canister." 

"Oh," said  Deborah,  "you  seem  to  know 
all  about  it.     Where  does  she  keep  it?" 

"  Why,  there  'tis,  right  under  your  nose." 

"  Well,  I  can't  see  with  my  nose,  can  I?" 

She  took  it  and  put  it  rather  gingerly 
on  the  counter.  "  Now,  before  it  goes  off 
and  sends  us  all  to  Heaven  or  Somewhere, 
what  is  the  price  of  it,  if  you  please?" 

"Oh,  the  seller  sets  the  price,"  said  he. 

"All  right,"  said  she.  "Ten  shillings! 
See  what  a  lot  3-ou  can  kill  with  it." 

"The  mistress  always  makes  it  half  a 
crown." 

"Ay,"  said  Deborah,  "she  is  a  hard 
woman.  You  give  me  a  shilling,  and 
I'll  only  charge  you  cighteenpence." 

While  he  was  counting  out  the  money, 
a  keen  whistle  was  heard.  Deborah's 
quick  ears  caught  it  directly.  "Is  that 
for  you?"  said  she. 

"No;  more  likely  for  you." 

"All  the  better.  'Whistle  and  I'll  come 
to  you,  my  lad, '"  said  she.  directing  the 
invitation  out  into  the  street. 

"I'd  step  out  and  whistle  if  I  thought 
that."  said  the  gamekeeper,  showing  his 
whistle.     "Shall  I  try?" 

"  Why  not? 

"  '  It's  a  man's  part  to  try. 
And  a  woman's  to  deny, 

And  new  you'd  better  fly,' 

for  here  comes  our  family  sponge.  Well, 
he  does  shake  off  liquor  quick,  I  must  say 
that  for  him." 

James  Mansell  came  through  the  parlor, 
clean  washed  and  very  neatly  dressed. 

"Mrs.  Smart,"  said  he,  civilly. 

"  Mr.  Mansell,  I  hope  I  see  you  well,  sir. 
It's  you  for  quick  recoveries.  Bloody  noses 
is  good  for  the  brain,  apparently,"  sug- 
gested Deborah,  "likewise  a  little  repose 
after  the  fatigue  of  drinking  and  fight- 
ing." 

"I  did  take  forty  winks." 

"Well,  sir,  and  now  you  are  fortified, 
what's   the  next  order?     Another  cup   of 


coffee,  warranted  to  contain  a  little  chic- 
ory, and  a  deal  of  bullock's  liver,  acorns, 
burned  rags,   and  muck?" 

"No;  after  this  last  experience  I've  fore- 
sworn all  liquids  except  juicy  meat  and 
rotten  potatoes.  And  I  should  feel  greatly 
i  ibliged  if  you  would  prepare  me  a  nice  hot 
steak,  and  fry  me  some  onions  nice  and 
brown,  as  you  alone  can  fr}r  them." 

"  It  is  the  least  any  woman  can  do  for 
such  a  civil-spoken  gentleman,"  said  Debo- 
rah, and  she  dived  at  once  into  her  kitchen, 
telling  him  to  mind  the  shop.  She  little 
thought  that  his  great  object  was  to  get 
rid  of  her. 

He  watched  her  out,  and  then  went  to 
the  shopdoor  and  looked  out.  It  was  Var- 
ney's  whistle  that  had  drawn  him,  and  that 
worthy  was  waiting,  and  upon  Mansell's 
invitation  came  cautiously  in.  Never  was 
thief  more  plainly  marked  on  a  human  he- 
ing.  His  little,  lank,  wriggling  body  re- 
minded one  of  a  weasel,  and  his  eyebrows 
seemed  to  spring  from  his  temples,  and 
meet  on  the  bridge  of  bis  nose.  The  eyes 
thus  fiamed  could  not  keep  still  a  moment. 
They  were  like  a  hare's  ears,  in  constant 
alarm.  Between  this  man  and  Mansell  an 
eager  dialogue  took  place,  rapid  and  low, 
which  nobody  heard  bul  themselves.  But 
any  one  who  saw  the  speakers  would  feel 
sure  those  two  were  plotting  some  vile 
thing. 

Something  or  other  was  definitely  set- 
tle,], even  in  that  short  time,  and  then 
Varney,  who  was  ill  at  ease  in  that  place, 
invited  Mansell  to  turn  out  at  once. 

Mansell  objected  that  he  was  famished, 
and  dinner  was  being  prepared. 

"No,  no,"  said  the  other;  "I  won't  stay 
here.  You  follow  me  to  Buck's  dining- 
room;  and  mind,  no  more  liquor  for  me 
to-day.     It  will  be  a  ticklish  job." 

He  wriggled  away,  and  Mansell  took 
his  hat,  and  called  down  the  kitchen 
stairs:  "Mrs.  Smart  —  Deborah  —  please 
come  up  here,  and  attend  to  the  shop. 
I'm  wanted  for  a  job." 

Deborah  raised  no  objection,  but  she 
resolved  on  the  spot  that  the  steak  she 
had  twice  prepared  for  a  fool  should  now 
be  eaten  by  a  rational  being,  and  to  make 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


quite  sure  of  this  she  would  eat  it  herself. 
So  she  put  a  little  cloth  on  a  tray,  with  the 
steak  and  two  potatoes,  and  ran  up  with  it 
all,  and  put  this  savory  supper  on  the  flap, 
and  had  just  made  her  first  incision,  when 
in  came  one  of  the  little  mites  I  have 
referred  to,  intelligible  to  Sarah  alone. 
The  mite  rapped  the  counter  with  a 
penny.  Deborah  left  her  steak  and 
faced    him. 

"  What  can  I  serve  you,  sir?" 

The  mite  hammered  the  counter  with  his 
copper. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Deborah,  "I  see  what  I 
am  to  have  out  of  you ;  but  what  are  you 
to  have  for  all  that  money?"  Then  she 
leaned  over  the  child.  "Is  it  baccy?  Is 
it  soap?  It  should  be  soap  if  I  was  your 
mother,  you  little  pig.  You  won't  tell  me, 
eh?  It's  a  dead  secret.  Let's  try  another 
way !"  And  she  put  down  the  likeliest 
articles  one  after  another.  "There!  a 
penn'orth  o'  baccy  for  father;  a  penn'orth 
o'  soap;  a  penn'orth  o'  lollipops."  The 
child  grabbed  the  lollipops  in  a  moment 
and  left  the  copper,  and  Deborah  dashed 
back  to  her  steak,  muttering,  "Sally  would 
have  known  what  he  wanted  by  the  color 
of  his  hair." 

There  was  a  run  on  the  shop.  For  every 
three  mouthf  uls  of  steak  a  penny  customer. 
Deborah  dispatched  them  how  she  could, 
then  dashed  back  to  her  steak — in  vain  :  it 
was  an  endless  va  et  vient.  The  last  was 
a  sturdy  little  boy,  who  came  and  banged 
down  a  penny,  and  in  a  wonderful  bass 
voice  for  his  size  cried,  "Bull's-eyes." 
Deborah,  in  imitation  of  his  style,  banged 
down  a  ready  penn}- worth  of  bull's-eyes, 
then  banged  the  penny  into  an  iron  basin, 
then  dashed  back  and  hacked  away  at  her 
steak.  "  Oh,  dear !"  said  she,  "  I  wish  a 
shilling  would  come  in,  and  then  a  lull,  in- 
stead of  this  continual  torrent  of  fiery,  un- 
tamed farthing  pieces."  She  hadn't  half 
finished  her  steak  when  Mrs.  Mansell  and 
Pinder  came  home. 

"How  is  he  now?"  was  Sarah's  first 
word. 

"Sober  as  a  judge,  and  gone  out  for  a 
job;  and  if  it  is  all  the  same  to  everybody, 
I  ask  just  ten  minutes'  peace  to  eat  my 


53 
up   the 


supper."     Then    Deborah   caught 
tray  and  fled  into  the  kitchen. 

She  had  not  gone  long  when  a  detective 
in  plain  clothes  looked  in,  and  said  in  a  low 
voice  there  was  news.  A  female  detective 
had  been  put  on  to  Varney  with  rare  suc- 
cess. She  had  listened  in  the  bar  of  an 
eating-house,  and  had  picked  up  the  whole 
story.  The  kitchen  was  deserted  every 
night.  The  servant  was  out  gallivant- 
ing. Varney  had  come  in  through  the 
kitchen  and  robbed  the  till,  and  to-night 
he  was  going  to  rob  the  safe  or  something. 

"Now,"  said  Steele,  "get  my  men  in 
without  the  servant  knowing,  and  then 
send  her  out,  and  we  shall  nab  the  bloke 
to  a  certainty." 

Pinder  acquiesced,  but  Sarah  began  to 
exhibit  weakness.  "Oh,  dear!"  said  she, 
"  thieves,  and  jjolice,  and  perhaps  pistols !" 

Steele  whispered  to  Pinder,  "  Get  her  out 
of  the  way,  or  she'll  spill  the  treacle."  Pin- 
der persuaded  her  to  go  into  James's  room 
with  the  child  until  they  should  send  for 
her.  She  consented  very  readily.  Then 
Steele  let  in  a  policeman,  and  hid  him  be- 
hind a  screen  in  the  parlor.  Two  more 
were  hidden  in  an  empty  house  opposite, 
watching  every  move.  Then  Pinder  put 
up  the  shutters  and  darkened  the  shop. 
Now  the  question  was  how  to  get  Deborah 
out  of  the  house.  Pinder  had  to  go  and 
ask  Sarah  if  she  could  manage  that.  "  In 
a  minute,"  said  she.  She  came  down,  and 
went  into  the  kitchen  with  ten  shillings, 
and  told  Deborah  she  should  have  her 
printed  gown  in  spite  of  them  all.  Then 
Deborah  was  keen  to  get  out  before  the 
shops  closed,  and  in  due  course  the  con- 
federates heard  her  go  out  and  bang  the 
kitchen  door. 

Now  there  was  no  saying  positively 
whether  Varney  was  on  the  watch  or 
not;  and  if  he  was,  he  might  make  his 
attempt  in  a  few  minutes,  or  wait  an  hour 
or  two.  And  as  he  was  an  old  hand,  he 
would  probably  look  all  round  the  house  to 
see  if  there  was  danger.  Every  light  had 
to  be  put  out,  and  the  shutters  drawn,  and 
the  screen  carefully  placed. 

They  closed  the  parlor  door,  and  hid  in 
the  parlor. 


54 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


"But  how  is  my  man  to  get  in?"  Sarah 
whispered. 

One  of  the  black,  undistinguishable 
figures  replied  to  her,  "Easy  enough, 
only  I  hope  he  won't  come  this  two 
hours;    he  would  spoil  all." 

"Not  come  to  his  supper!  Then  that 
will  be  a  sign  he  is  not  sober.  I'm  all  of 
a  tremble." 

"  Hush !" 

"  What!  thieves?" 

"  No ;  but  pray  don't  talk.  He'll  come 
in  like  a  cat,  you  may  be  sure.     Hark !" 

"What  is  it:-" 

"The kitchen  window, "whispered Steele. 
Now  Sarah  was  silent,  but  panted  audibly 
in  the  darkness. 

M\  ind-bya  step  was  heard  on  the  stairs. 
Then  silence — another  creaking  step.  ■  The 
watchers  huddled  behind  the  screen. 

What  now  took  place  they  could  onlj 
divine  in  part. 

But  I  will  describe  it  from  the  other  side 
of  the  parlor  door. 

A  man  opened  the  kitchen  door  softly, 
and  stepped  in  lightly  and  noiselessly  as  a 
cat. 

He  had  a  dark-lantern,  and  flashed  it 
one  half  momenl  to  show  him  the  place. 
In  that  moment  was  revealed  a  laic  with 
a  very  small  black  mask.  Small  as  it  was. 
it  effectually  disguised  the  man,  and  made 
his  e;es  look  terrible  with  the  excitement 
of  crime.  He  opened  the  parlor  dour, 
flashed  bis  light  in  for  a  moment,  then 
the  door.  That  was  a  trying  mo- 
ment to  the  watchers.  They  feared  he 
would  examine  the  room. 

Then  the  man  stepped  softly  to  the 
kitchen  door,  opened  it,  and  whispered, 
"Coast  clear;  come  on."  Another  man 
came  in  on  tiptoe.  The  first  -  comer 
handed   him   the   light. 

" No,"  whispered  the  other,  "you  hold 
the  light.     Give  me  the  key." 

Then  the  first-comer  opened  the  bull's-eye 
direct  on  the  safe,  and  gave  the  second  man 
a  bright  new  key,  evidently  forged  for  this 
job.  The  safe  was  opened  by  the  second 
man.  He  looked,  and  uttered  an  ejacu- 
lation of  surprise.  Then  he  plunged  his 
hands  in,  and  there  was  a  musical  clatter 


that  was  heard  and  understood  in  the  next 
room,  and  the  watchers  stole  out  softly. 

"  Here's  a  haul !"  cried  the  man.  "  Come 
and  reckon  'em  on  the  counter.  Why, 
there's  more  than  fifty,  I  know."  He  put 
them  down  in  a  heap  on  the  counter,  and 
instantly  the  parlor  door  opened,  and  a 
powerful  bull's-eye  shot  its  light  upon  the 
glittering  coin.  The  man  stood  dum- 
founded.  The  other,  with  a  yell,  dashed 
at  the  kitchen  door,  tore  it  open,  and  re- 
ceived the  fire  of  another  bull's-eye  from 
the  foot  of  the  stairs.  He  staggered  back, 
and  in  a  moment  was  at  the  shop  door  and 
opened  it;  the  key  was  in  it,  that  James 
might  he  admitted  if  he  came.  Another 
bull's-eye  met  him  there,  held  by  a  police- 
man, who  stepped  in,  and  bade  his  mate 
remain  outside. 

The  shop  was  now  well  lighted  with  all 
these  vivid  gleams,  concentrated  on  the 
stolen  gold,  and  every  now  and  then  played 
upon  the  masked  faces  and  ghastly  cheeks 
and  glittering  eyes  of  the  burglars. 

Steele  surveyed  his  trapped  vermin  grim- 
ly for  a  moment  or  two.  He  felt  escape 
was  impossible. 

"Now,  Dick  Varney,"  said  he.  "you'are 
wanted.  Handcuff  him."  The  smaller 
figure  made  no  resistance.  "Now.  who's 
your  pal?  Don't  know  him  by  his  cut. 
Come,  my  man.  off  with  that  mask,  and 
show  us  your  ugly  mug."  He  was  going 
to  help  him  off  with  it;  but  the  man 
caught  up  a  knife  that  Deborah  had  left 
on  the  counter. 

"  Touch  me  if  you  dare !" 

"  Oh,  that's  the  game,  is  it?"  said  Steele, 
sternly.  "  Draw  staves,  men.  Now  don't 
you  try  that  game  with  me,  my  bloke. 
Fling  down  that  knife,  and  respect  the 
law.  or  you'll  lie  on  that  floor  with  your 
skull  split  open."  The  man  flung  the 
knife  down  savagely.  "And  now  who 
are  you?" 

The  man  tore  his  mask  off  with  a  snarl 
of  rage. 

"I'm  the  master  of  the  hous;:!" 

He  rang  these  words  out  like  a  trumpet. 
A  faint  moan  was  heard  in  the  parlor. 

"  Gammon !  "  said  Steele,  contemptu- 
ously. 


SING LEHE ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


55 


"Ask  Dick  Varney,  ask  Joe  Pinder 
there,"  said  the   man.     "Ask   anybody." 

"  Ask  nobody  but  me,"  said  the  miserable 
wife,  coming  suddenly  forward.  "He  is 
my  husband,   sir,  and  God  help  me !" 

"D'ye  hear?"  cried  the  raging  villain, 
mortified  to  the  core,  yet  exultant  in  his 
revenge.  "  This  house  is  mine — this  shop 
is  mine — that  woman  is  mine — and  this 
money  is  mine.'"  He  clutched  the  gold, 
and  put  it  insolently  into  his  breeches 
pockets.  "  Take  your  hand  off  that  man, 
Bobby." 

"Not  likely,"  said  Steele.  "A  thief 
caught  in   the  act." 

"  A  thief !  Why,  he  is  my  servant, 
doing  my  business,  under  my  orders — 
one  of  my  servants.  My  wife  there — 
she's  my  servant  in  law — collared  my 
money  and  hid  it  away ;  I  ordered  another 
of  my  servants  to  open  the  safe  and  get 
me  back  my  own.  He's  here  by  my  au- 
thority." 

"Why  were  you  in  masks,  my  bold 
blackguard?"    asked    Steele. 

"Oh,  pray  don't  anger  him,  sir,"  said 
poor  Sarah.  "  Yes,  James,  you  are  the 
master.  It  was  all  a  mistake ;  we  had  no 
idea — oh !"  She  tottered  and  put  her  hand 
to  her  brow. 

Steele  helped  her  to  a  chair.  So  small 
an  incident  did  not  interrupt  her  master's 
eloquence.  "Respect  the  law,  says  you? 
Pretty  limbs  of  the  law  you  are,  that  don't 
know  the  law  of  husband  and  wife." 

Long  before  this  Steele  had  seen  plainly 
enough  that  he  was  in  the  wrong  box. 
"We  know  the  law  well  enough,"  said 
he,  dejectedly.  "It's  a  little  one-sided, 
but  it's  the  law.  Come,  men,  loose  that 
vagabond." 

"  He  shall  bring  an  action  for  false  im- 
prisonment." 

"No  he  won't." 

"  Why  not?  He  has  got  the  law  on  his 
side." 

"And  we  have  got  his  little  mask,  and 
his  little  antecedents  on  ours." 

Varney  whipped  out  of  the  place,  and  at 
the  same  time  Deborah  opened  the  kitchen 
door  and  stood  aghast. 

"  Come,  men, "  said  Steele,  "  clear  out ;  we 


are  only  making  mischief  between  man 
and  wife,  and  she'll  be  the  sufferer,  poor 
thing." 

"No,"  said  James  Mansell,  authorita- 
tively. "  I'm  the  master,  and  since  you 
have  heard  one  ston-,  I'll  trouble  you  to 
stay  and  hear  the  other.  I'm  the  one  that 
is  being  robbed — of  my  money,  and  my 
wife's  affections,  and  my  good  name." 

"  Oh,  James ! "  gasped  Sarah,  "  pray 
don't  say  so.  Don't  think  so  for  a  mo- 
ment." 

He  ignored  her  entirely;  never  looked 
at  her;  but  went  on  to  the  detective :  "  My 
wife  here  hid  my  money  away  from  me." 

"  To  pay  my  master's  rent,  and  make  his 
child  a  lady,"  put  in  Sarah. 

"  And  now  she  and  her  old  sweetheart 
there — " 

"Sweetheart!  I  never  had  but  thee." 

"  They  have  put  the  mark  of  a  thief  on 
me  in  this  town.  So  be  it.  I  leave  it  for- 
ever.    I'm  off  to  America." 

He  marched  to  the  street  door,  then 
turned  to  shoot  his  last  dart.  "With  my 
money  "  and  he  slapped  his  pockets,  "and 
my  liberty,"  and  he  waved  his  hat. 

"  But  I'll  have  your  life,"  hissed  Pinder, 
and  strode  at  him  with  murder  in  his  eyes. 

But  Sarah  Mansell,  whc  sat  there  crushed, 
and  seemed  scarcely  sensible,  bounded  to 
her  feet  in  a  moment,  and  seized  Pinder 
with  incredible  vigor. 

"Touch  him,  if  you  dare!"  cried  she. 

And  would  you  believe  it,  males,  she 
had  no  sooner  stopped  him  effectually  than 
she  turned  weaker  than  ever,  and  sank  all 
limp  against  the  man  she  had  seized  with 
a  clutch  of  steel.  Then  he  had  nothing  to 
do  but  support  her  faint  head  against  his 
manly  breast;  and  so,  arrested  by  woman's 
vigor,  which  is  strong  for  a  moment,  and 
conquered  by  woman's  weakness,  which 
is  invincible,  he  half  led,  half  lifted  her 
tenderly  back  to  her  seat.  This  defense  of 
her  insulter  was  the  last  feat  that  day  of 
unconquerable  love. 

The  policemen  went  out  softly,  and  cast 
looks  of  manly  pity  behind  them. 

Soon  after  the  stunning  blow  came  the 
agony  of  an  outraged,  deserted,  and  still 
loving  wife.     But  Deborah  rushed  in  with 


56 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


Lucy  in  her  arms,  and  forced  the  mother 
to  embrace  her  child,  then  wreathed  her 
long  arms  round  them  both,  and  they, 
being  country  bred,  rocked  and  sobbed 
together.  Honest  Joe  Pinder  set  his  face 
to  the  wall,  but  there  his  concealment 
ended;  he  blubbered  aloud  with  all  his 
heart. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  first  burst  of  distress  was  followed 
by  the  torment  of  suspense:  for  several 
days,  at  Sarah's  request,  the  friendly  police 
watched  the  steamboats,  to  give  her  an 
opportunity  of  appeasing  her  burglar;  and 
all  this  time  her  eye  was  always  on  the 
street  by  day,  her  ear  ever  on  the  watch 
for  the  music  of  the  blackguard's  step. 
She  kept  hopi  I  hing  from  | 

affection:  why  should  he  abandon  Lucy? 
She  had  never  offended  him. 

But  in  tin!-.'  proof  was  brought  hi 
he  had  actually  levanted  in  a  sailing  ves- 
sel bound  for  New  York. 

I  do  not  practice  vivisection,  and  will 
in >t  detail  all  the  sufferings  of  an  in- 
sulted and  deserted  wife  —  sufferings  all 
the  more  keen  that  she  was  a  woman  of 
great  spirit  and  rare  merit,  and  admired 
for  her  looks  and  her  qualities  by  every- 
body except  her  husband.  Public  sym- 
pathy was  offered  her.  A  Liverpool  jour- 
nal got  the  incident  from  the  police,  and 
dealt  with  it  in  a  paragraph  headed 

EVERY  MAN  HIS  OWN  BURGLAR. 


The  writer  of  paragraphs,  after  the 
manner  of  his  class,  seasoned  the  dish 
from  his  own  spice-box.  A  revolver  was 
leveled  at  the  auto-burglar  by  the  wife's 
friend ;  but  the  wife  disarmed  him ;  a  cir- 
cumstance the  writer  deplored,  and  hoped 
that,  should  "sponsa-burglary'' recur,  even 
conjugal  affection  would  respect  the  inter- 


ests of  society,  and  let  the  bullet  take  its 
course. 

Pinder  read  out  this  paragraph,  or  papa- 
phrase,  and  translated  the  last  sentence  into 
the  vulgar  tongue.  Then  Deborah  reveled 
in  it.  Sarah  was  horrified  at  the  exposure, 
and  indignant  at  a  journal  presuming  to 
meddle  with  conjugalia.  To  hear  her,  one 
would  infer  that  if  a  blackguard  should 
murder  his  wife,  it  ought  to  be  hushed  up, 
all  matters  between  husband  and  wife,  good 
or  bad,  being  secret  and  sacred,  and  all  in- 
dictments thereon  founded  obtrusive,  im- 
pertinent, and  indelicate. 

A  greal  sea-row  has  often  compensations 
that  do  the  heart  no  good  at  the  ninnient; 
but  time  reveals  their  importance,  and  that 
they  would  have  been  comforters  at  the 
time,  ci mid  the  sufferers  have  foreseen 
whal  was  coming.  This  observation  is 
necessarily  connected  with  trust  in 
Providence;  yet  the  good,  who  suffer, 
should  ei  insider  man's  inability  to  foresee 
tb"  event-'  of  a  single  day,  and  also  that 
they  are  in  the  hands  of  One  before  Whom 
what  we  call  the  future  lies  flat  like  a  map 
alnng  with  the  past  and  the  presi  nt. 

Even  myown  brief  experience  of  human 
life  lias  shown  me  the  truth  and  value  of 
these  lines,  so  comforting  to  just  men  and 
women : 

"Willi  steady  mind  thy  course  of  duty  run : 
'.  er  does,  nor  suffers  to  be  di  me, 
Aught  but  thyself  wouldsl  do.  couldst  thou  fore- 
see 
The  end  of  all  events  so  well  as  He." 

This  story  is  not  written  to  support  that 
or  any  other  theory ;  but  as  all  its  curious 
incidents  lie  before  me,  I  cannot  help  be- 
ing  struck  with  the  numerous  conversions 
of  evil  into  unexpected  good  which  it  re- 
veals. 

The  immediate  examples  are  these.  In 
the  first  place,  before  this  great  and  endur- 
ing grief  fell  on  Sarah  Mansell,  Mr.  Joseph 
Pinder  had  a  natural  but  narrow-minded 
contempt  for  Mrs.  Deborah  Smart.  He 
saw  a  six  months'  widow  husband-hunt- 
ing without  disguise.  To  put  it  in  his 
own  somewhat  rough  but  racy  language, 
she  raked  the  town  every  night  for  No.  2. 
But  when  lasting  grief  fell  upon  Sarah,  he 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


57 


saw  this  imperfect  widow  resign  her  matri- 
monial excursions  night  after  night,  and 
:  exhaust  her  ingenuity  to  comfort  her  sister. 
Sometimes  it  was  rough  comfort,  some- 
times it  was  the  indirect  comfort  of  kind- 
ness and  attention,  but  sometimes  it  was 
a  tender  sympathy  he  had  never  expected 
from  so  rough-and-ready  a  rustic.  There- 
upon Pinder  and  Deborah  became  friends, 
and  as  Sarah  was  grateful,  though  sad, 
this  wove  a  threefold  cord — a  very  strong 
one. 

The  second  good  result  was  one  that  even 
the  mourning  wife  appreciated,  because  she 
was  a  mother,  and  looked  to  the  future. 

Seeing  her  deserted  and  in  need  of  help, 
Joseph  Pinder  became  her  servant,  and  yet 
her  associate.  For  a  fair  salary  he  threw 
himself  into  the  business,  and  very  soon 
improved  and  enlarged  it.  Tinned  meats, 
soups,  and  fruits  were  just  then  fighting 
for  entrance  into  the  stomach  of  the  preju- 
diced Briton.  Joseph  prevailed  on  the  sis- 
ters to  taste  these,  and  select  the  good  ones. 
They  very  soon  found  that  among  the  trash 
there  were  some  comestible  treasures,  such 
as  the  Boston  baked  beans,  Australian  beef 
briskets,  and  an  American  ox-tail  soup; 
also,  the  pears  of  one  firm  in  Delaware, 
and  the  peaches  of  another. 

Pinder,  who,  like  many  workmen,  was 
an  ingenious  fellow,  had  invested  his  sav- 
ings in  a  type-writer,  and  he  printed  short 
notices,  and  inundated  inns  and  private 
kitchens  with  the  praises  of  the  above 
articles,  and  personally  invited  many 
cooks  and  small  housekeepers  to  the  use 
of  his  cheap  American  soup  for  gravies. 
"Where,"  said  he,  "is  the  sense  of  your 
boiling  down  legs  of  beef  for  gravies  and 
stews  and  things?  Here  are  six  rich  stews, 
or  hashes,  for  10d.,  and  no  trouble  but  to 
take  it  out  of  a  can." 

One  day  Sarah  showed  him,  with  sor- 
rowful pride,  James  Mansell's  "panels," 
as  he  called  them.  That  personage,  before 
he  took  to  drink,  was  an  enthusiast  in  his 
art,  and  he  had  produced  about  fifteen 
specimens  on  thin  panels  two  feet  square. 
They  were  really  magnificent.  Joseph 
cleaned  and  varnished  them ;  then  caught 
a  moderate  grainer,  and  made  him  study 


them;  then  put  one  or  two  of  them  in  a 
window,  with  a  notice:  "Graining  done  in 
first-rate  style  by  a  pupil  of  Joseph  Man- 
sell."  The  trade  soon  heard,  and  gave  the 
young  man  a  trial.  He  was  not  up  to  the 
mark  of  his  predecessor,  but,  thanks  to 
the  models,  and  Pinder  overlooking  his 
work,  he  was  accepted  by  degrees,  and  so 
Mrs.  Mansell  drove  her  husband's  trade 
and  her  own  enlarged.  Money  flowed  in 
by  two  channels,  and  did  not  flow  out  for 
"drink."  Pinder's  salary  was  not  one- 
tenth  part  of  the  increase  his  zeal  and 
management  brought  into  the  safe,  and 
now  there  was  no  drunkard  and  auto- 
burglar  to  drain  his  wife's  purse  and  tap 
the  till. 

In  the  three  years  whose  incidents  I  have 
decided  not  to  particularize,  and  so  be  tri  vo- 
luminous, not  luminous,  the  deserted  wife 
had  purchased  the  little  shop  and  premises 
in  Green  Street,  and  had  £400  in  the  bank, 
Pinder  having  declared  the  London  and 
County  Bank  to  be  safer  than  a  safe. 

Lucy  Mansell  was  now  over  seven,  and 
a  precocious  girl,  partly  by  nature  (for  she 
came  of  a  clever  father  and  a  thoughtful 
mother),  but  partly  by  living,  not  with 
children,  but  with  grown-up  people.  As 
she  inherited  her  mother's  attention,  and 
was  a  born  mimic,  she  seemed  to  strangers 
cleverer  than  she  was.  The  sprightliness 
of  Aunt  Deborah  naturally  attracted  this 
young  person,  and  of  course  she  admired 
what  at  any  young  ladies'  school  she 
would  have  been  expressly  invited  to 
avoid  —  the  by-words  and  blunt  idioms 
that  garnished  Mrs.   Smart's  discourse. 

Now,  having  faithfully  though  briefly 
chronicled  the  small  beer,  I  come  to  the 
events  of  an  exciting  day. 

Sarah  sat  at  the  counter,  sewing,  and 
ready  to  serve  customers.  Lucy  sat  at  her 
knee,  sewing,  and  ready  to  run  for  what- 
ever might  be  wanted.  Deborah  came  up 
from  the  kitchen  with  a  rump  steak  and 
some  kidneys  in  her  market-basket,  and 
thrust  them  under  her  sister's  nose.  Debo- 
rah was  a  connoisseur  of  raw  meat,  luckily 
for  the  establishment,  and  admired  it  when 
good.  Sarah  did  not  admire  it  at  the  best 
of  times,  so  she  said,  "  I'll  take  your  word." 


58 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


"Do  but  feel  it,"  persisted  Deborah. 
Thereupon  Sarah  averted  her  head. 

Deborah  warmed.  "  Wait  till  you  see 
it  at  table.  I  am  going  to  make  you  a 
steak  and  kidney  pudding." 

"  Oh,  be  joyful !"  cried  Lucy,  and  clapped 
her  hands. 

"Come,  there's  sense  in  the  family,"  re- 
marked Deborah;  "and  if  your  mother 
doesn't  enjoy  it,  I  give  warning  at  the 
table — that's  all." 

"I'll  try,  sister,"  said  Sarah,  sweetly. 
"  But  you  know  an  empty  chair  at  the  head 
of  the  table  is  a  poor  invitation  to  eat,  and 
the  stomach  is  soon  satisfied  when  the  heart 
is  sad." 

"That  is  true,  my  poor  Sal;  but,  dear 
heart,  is  there  never  to  be  an  end  of  fret- 
ting for  a  man  that  left  you  like  that,  and 
has  never  Bent  you  a  line?" 

"That  is  my  grief.  lam  afraid  he  is 
dead." 

"  Not  he.  He  has  got  plenty  more  mis- 
chief  to  do  first.  Now  I'm  afraid  you'll 
hate  me,  but  I  can't  help  it.  'The  truth 
may  lie  blamed,  hut  it  can't  he  shamed.' 
'Twas  the  luckiest  thing  ever  happened  to 
any  good  woman  when  he  left  you,  and 
you  got  a  good  servant  instead  of  a  bad 
master." 

"If  I  only  knew  that  he  was  alive!"  per- 
sisted Sarah,  absorbed  in  her  one  idea. 

Deborah's  patience  went,  and  she  let  out 
her  real  mind.  She  had  kept  it  to  herself 
about  eighteen  months,  so  now  it  came  out 
with  a  rush.  She  set  her  arms  akimbo — 
an  attitude  she  very  seldom  adopted  in 
reasoning  with  Sarah.  "If  so  be  as  you 
are  tired  of  peace  and  comfort,  and  money 
in  both  pockets,  you  put  it  in  the  news- 
papers as  you  have  bought  these  premises, 
and  got  £400  in  the  bank,  and  you  mark 
my  words,  Jemmy  Mansell  will  turn  up  in 
a  month ;  but  'tis  for  your  money  he  will 
come,  not  for  you  nor  your  child." 

This  home -thrust  produced  a  greater 
effect  on  Sarah  than  Deborah  expected ; 
for  as  a  rule  Sarah  rnerely  defended  her 
husband  through  thick  and  thin :  but  now 
she  was  greatly  agitated,  and  when  Debo- 
rah came  to  that  galling  conclusion,  she 
drew  herself  up  to   her  full  height,   and 


said,  sternly,  "  If  I  thought  that  I'd  tear 
him  from  my  heart,  though  I  tore  the  heart 
out  of  my  bod}-.  Perhaps  you  think  be- 
cause I'm  single-hearted  and  loving  that 
I  am  all  weakness.  You  don't  know 
me,  then.  When  I  do  turn,  I  turn  to 
stone." 

As  she  said  this  her  features  became 
singularly  rigid,  and  almost  cruel,  and  as 
a  great  pallor  overspread  them  at  the  same 
time,  she  really  seemed  turned  to  marble, 
and  the  gentle  Sarah  was  scarcely  recog- 
nizable. Even  Deborah,  who  had  known 
her  all  her  life,  stared  at  her,  and  suspected 
she  had  not  j-et  got  to  the  bottom  of  her 
character.  Lucy  gave  the  conversation  a 
lighter  turn — she  thought  all  this  was  much 
ado  about  nothing.  "  Don't  you  fret  any 
more,  mamma,'' said  she.  "Ifpapawon't 
come  home,  you  marry  Uncle  Joe." 

Mrs.  Mansell  remonstrated:  "Lucy  dear, 
for  shame." 

"  '  No  shame,  no  sin  ; 
No  copper,  no  tin,'" 

said  Lucy.  "  Marry  him  bang !  Here  he 
is." 

"Hush!"  and  Sarah  reddened  like  fire. 

Pinder  opened  the  shop  door,  and  came 
briskly  in  fur  business.  "Good-morning, 
Sarah;  morning,  Deborah;  morning,  little 
Beauty.  Made  a  good  collection  this  time. 
Please  open  your  ledger  and  begin  alpha- 
betical.  B — Bennett,  the  new  hotel,  £3 
L3s.  i'"/.  There's  the  money."  Sarah 
wrote  the  payment  of  Bennett  in  the 
ledger.  Pinder  went  on  putting  each 
payment  on  the  counter  in  a  separate 
paper.       "Church,    £1    5s.;     Mr.    Drake, 

e't  9s." 

"  That's  a  he-duck,"  suggested  Lucy. 

"You're  another,  allowing  for  sex,7'  re- 
torted Pinder.  "And  now  we  jump  to 
M— Mr.   Mayor." 

"  That  is  a  she-horse,"  remarked  Lucy, 
always  willing  to  impart  information. 
Pinder  denied  that,  and  said  it  was  the 
great  civic  authority  of  the  town,  and  in 
proof  produced  his  worship's  check  for 
£17  4.s.  "And  now  what's  the  news 
here?"  he  inquired. 

"I'll  tell  you,"  said  miss,  with  an  oblig- 


SING LEHE ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


59 


ing  air.  "  Mamma  and  Aunt  Deb  have 
just  had  a  shindy." 

"Oh,  fie!"  cried  Deborah.  "It's  you 
for  picking  up  expressions." 

"Then  why  do  you  let  them  fall?"  said 
the  mother.  "  It's  j'ou  she  copies.  We 
only  differed  in  opinion." 

"  And  bawled  at  one  another,"  suggested 
Lucy. 

Deborah  exclaimed,  "  Oh,  for  shame,  to 
say  that ! " 

Says  this  terrible  child,  " '  The  truth 
maybe  blamed,  but  it  can't  be  shamed.' 
You  know  you  did." 

"It  sounds  awful,"  said  Pinder,  dryly. 
"  Let  us  make  'em  friends  again.  What 
is  the. row?"  and  Mr.  Pinder  grinned  in- 
credulous. 

"Well,"  explained  Lucy,  in  spite  of  a 
furtive  signal  from  her  mother,  "mamma 
fretted  because  papa  does  not  write;  then 
she "  (pointing  at  Deborah,  malgre  the 
rules  of  good-breeding)  "  quarreled  with 
her  for  fretting,  and  she  said,  'You  put 
it  in  the  papers  how  rich  you  are,  and  he'll 
turn  up  directly.'  Then  mamma  bounced 
up  and  gave  it  her  hot"  (Sarah  scandal- 
ized, Deborah  amused),  "and  then  it  ended 
with  mamma  crying.  Everything  ends 
with  poor  mamma  crying." 

Then  Lucy  flung  her  arms  round  her 
mother's  neck,  and  Pinder  suggested, 
"Little  angel." 

Sarah  kissed  her  child  tenderly  and  said, 
"  No,  no ;  no  quarrel.  And  do  but  give  me 
proof  that  he  is  alive,  and  I'll  never  shed 
another  tear." 

"  Is  that  a  bargain  ?  "  asked  Pinder, 
quietly. 

"That  it  is." 

"Just  give  me  your  hand  upon  it,  then." 
She  gave  him  her  hand,  and  looked  eagerly 
in  his  face. 

He  walked  out  of  the  shop  directly,  as- 
sailed by  a  fire  of  questions,  to  none  of 
which  he  replied.  The  truth  is  he  could 
not  at  present  promise  anything.  But  he 
knew  this  much :  that  Dick  Varney  had 
gone  out  to  New  York  three  months  ago, 
and  had  been  seen  at  a  public-house  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Green  Street  that  very 
day.     Pinder  got   it   into  his  head   that 


Varney  would  most  likely  know  whether 
Mansell  was  alive  or  dead.  With  some 
difficulty  he  found  Varney.  That  worthy 
was  dilapidated,  so  he  was  induced  by  the 
promise  of  a  sovereign  to  come  and  tell 
Mrs.  Mansell  all  he  knew  about  her  hus- 
band. The  sly  Varney  objected  to  tell 
Pinder  until  he  had  fingered  the  rnoney, 
and  asked  for  an  advance.  This  the  wary 
Pinder  declined  peremptorily,  but  showed 
him  the  coin. 

Thus  distrusting  each  other,  they  settled 
to  go  to  Green  Street.  But  when  he  got 
to  the  door,  Varney  remembered  the  scene 
of  the  burglary,  and  the  woman's  dis- 
tress; he  took  fright  and  wanted  to  go 
back. 

"No,  no,"  said  Pinder;  "I'll  bear  the 
blame  of  this  visit,"  and  almost  forced  him 
in. 

The  family  was  still  all  in  a  flutter,  and 
Deborah  bearing  her  sister  company  in  the 
shop.  Though  Sarah  had  only  seen  Varney 
once,  his  face  and  figure  were  indelible  in 
her  memory,  and  at  the  sight  of  him  she 
gave  a  faint  scream,  put  both  her  hands 
before  her  face,  and  turned  her  head  away 
into  the  bargain.  "  Oh,  that  man !  "  she 
cried. 

"  There!"  said  Varney,  "she  can't  bear  the 
sight  of  me,  and  no  wonder."  With  this  re- 
mark—the most  creditable  he  had  made  for 
years — he  tried  to  bolt.  But  Pinder  collared 
him,  and  held  him  tight,  and  for  the  first 
time  this  three  years  scolded  Sarah.  "  Why, 
where's  the  sense  of  flying  at  the  man,  and 
frightening  what  little  courage  he  has  out 
of  him,  and  shutting  his  mouth?" 

"No,  no,"  said  Deborah,  hastily.  "If 
you  can  tell  her  anything  about  the  man, 
don't  you  doubt  your  welcome.  Let  by- 
gones be  by-gones." 

"  I  am  bound  to  answer  whatever  she 
asks  me." 

"  And  I'm  bound  to  give  you  this,  if  you 
do,"  said  Pinder.  "Deborah  shall  hold  it 
meantime."  He  handed  over  the  sovereign 
to  Deborah.  Her  fingers  closed  on  it,  and 
did  not  seem  likely  to  open  without  the 
equivalent. 

During  all  this  Sarah's  eyes  had  been 
gradually  turning  round  toward  the  man, 


60 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


and  by  a  feminine  change  they  now  dwelt 
on  him  as  if  they  would  pierce  him. 

"You  have  been  to  New  York?" 

"Yes." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"  Did  you  look  for  my  husband?" 

"  You  may  be  sure  of  that,  and  it  took 
me  all  my  time  to  find  him." 

"Find  him!     He  is  alive?" 

"Alive!     Of  course  he  is." 

"Thank  God !     Thank  God !" 

She  was  so  overcome  that  Pinder  and 
Deborah  came  to  her  assistance,  but  she 
waved  them  off.  "No,"  said  she;  "joy 
won't  hurt  me.     Alive  and   well?" 

"Never  better." 

"And  happy?" 

"Jolly  as  a  sand-boy." 

"  A  sand-boy?"  murmured  Lucy,  inquir- 
ingly. 

Sarah's  next  question  was  uttered  timid- 
ly and  piteously — "  Did  ho  ask  jitter  us?" 

Deborah  cast  an  uneasy  glance  at  Pinder. 
She  was  sorry  her  sister  hail  asked  that, 
and  feared  a.  freezing  reply. 

"  Rather,"  said  Varney.  "  First  word  ho 
said  was,  'How  is  Sarah  and   the  kid  ?'  " 

"  Bless  him  !"  cried  Sarah.   "  Bless  him  !" 

Lucy  informed  the  company  that  a  kid 
was  a  little  goat. 

But  her  innocence  did  not  provoke  a 
smile.  They  were  all  hanging  on  Dick 
Varney's  words. 

"  And  what  did  you  say  about  us?" 

"  Oh,  well,  I  could  only  tell  him  what  I 
hear  of  all  sides,  that  you  are  doing  his 
trade  as  well  as  your  own.  That  Joe  Pin- 
der is  your  factotum.  That  you  are  as  rich 
as  a  Jew,  and  respected  accordingly." 

"You  told  him  that?"  said  Deborah, 
keenly. 

"  Those  were  my  very  words." 

"And  he  didn't  come  back  with  you?" 
she  asked. 

"No." 


"  Then  he  must  be  doing  well  out 
there?" 

"  I  shouldn't  wonder ;  he  was  dressed  like 
a  gentleman." 

"  And  he  looked  like  one,  I'll  be  bound," 
said  his  devoted  wife. 

"  He  didn't  behave  like  one,  then,  for  he 
gave  an  old  friend  the  cold  shoulder." 

"What  a  pity!"  suggested  Deborah — 
"you  that  used  to  set  him  such  a  good 
example." 

Pinder  said  that  was  not  fair,  and  the 
man  telling  them  all  he  could.  Deborah 
said  no  more  it  wasn't,  and  if  Mr.  Varney 
would  come  with  her,  she  would  cook  him 
a  bit  of  this  nice  steak. 

He  said  he  should  be  very  glad  of  it. 

"  But  mind,  there's  no  brandy  allowed  in 
this  house.  Can  you  drink  home-brewed 
ale?" 

"  I  can  drink  anything,"  said  he,  eagerly. 

She  showed  him  into  the  kitchen,  hut 
whipped  back  again  for  a  moment. 
"  There's  more  behind  than  he  has  told 
you,"  said  she.  "I'm  a-going  to  pump 
him."  She  ran  off  again  directly  to  carry 
out  this  design,  and  very  capable  of  it  sho 
was:  just  the  sort  of  woman  to  wait  for 
him  like  a  cat.  and  go  about  the  hush,  and 
put  no  question  of  any  importance  till  he 
had  eaten  his  fill,  and  drunk  the  home- 
brewed ale.  which  tasted  innocent  hut  was 
very  heady.  This  maneuver  of  hers  raised 
some  vague  expectations  in  the  grown-up 
people,  but  Lucy's  mind,  as  usual,  fixed 
itself  on  a  word. 

"Pump  him?"  said  she  to  Pinder.  "How 
will  she  do  that,  Factotum?" 

"Not  knowing,  can't  say,"  was  Facto- 
tum's reply. 

"Like  this,  Factotum?"  said  she,  and 
took  his  arm  and  pumped  with  it.  "  Good- 
by,  Factotum,"  said  she,  for  a  new  word 
was  like  a  new  toy  to  her;  "  I'm  off  to  see 
the  pumping." 

Pinder  laughed,  and  looked  at  Sarah; 
but  not  a  smile.  "  Why,  you  are  not  going 
to  fret  again?"  said  he.  "You  gave  me 
your  word  to  be  happy  if  he  was  alive." 

"  And  I  thought  I  should  at  the  time. 
But  now  I  know  he  is  alive,  I  know  too 
that  he  is  dead  to  me.     Alive  all  this  time, 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


61 


and  not  write  me  a  line !  I  insulted  him, 
and  he  hates  me.     I'm  a  deserted  wife." 

"And  I  am  a  useless  friend.  Nothing  I 
do  is  any  use."  He  lost  heart  for  a  time, 
and  went  and  took  a  turn  in  the  street, 
despondent,  and  for  the  moment  a  little 
out  of  temper. 

She  watched  his  retiring  figure,  and 
thought  he  had  gone  for  good,  and  felt 
that  she  must  appear  ungrateful,  and 
should  wear  out  this  true  friend's  pa- 
tience before  long.  "I  can't  help  it," 
said  she  to  herself.  "  I  can  love  but  one, 
and  him  I  shall  never  see  again." 

Never  was  her  sense  of  desolation  so 
strong  as  at  that  moment.  Sbe  laid  her 
brow  on  the  counter,  and  her  tears  ran 
slowly  but  steadily. 

She  had  been  so  some  time  when  a  voice 
somewhere  near  her  said,  rather  timidly, 
"Sally!" 

She  lifted  her  head  a  little  way  from  the 
counter,  but  did  not  look  toward  where 
the  voice  came  from;  it  seemed  like  a 
sound  in  a  dream  to  her. 

"It  is,"  said  the  man,  and  came  quickly 
to  her.  Then  she  looked  and  uttered  a 
scream  of  rapture,  and  in  a  moment  hus- 
band and  wife  were  locked  in  each  other's 
arms. 

At  this  moment  Pinder,  whose  momen- 
tary impatience  had  very  soon  given  way 
to  compassion  and  pity,  came  back  to  make 
the  amende  by  increased  kindness;  and 
Deborah,  who  knew  every  tone  of  her  sis- 
ter's voice,  flew  up  from  the  kitchen  at  her 
cry  of  joy.  But  in  the  first  rapture  of 
meeting  and  reconciliation  neither  spouse 
took  any  notice  of  these  astounded  wit- 
nesses. 

"  My  Jemmy !  my  own !  my  own !" 

"My  sweet,  forgiving  wife!" 

"  It  is  me  should  ask  forgiveness." 

"No,  no!  'Twas  the  police  drove  me 
mad." 

" To  leave  me  for  three  years!" 

"Do  you  think  I'd  have  stayed  away 
three  weeks  if  I  had  thought  I  should  be 
so  welcome?" 

"  What !    you  did  not  know  how  I  love 

you?" 

Then  came  another  embrace,  and  at  last 


Sarah  realized  that  there  were  two  specta- 
tors, one  on  each  side  of  her,  and  those 
spectators  not  so  much  in  love  with  the 
recovered  treasure  as  she  was.  She  said, 
"Come,  clearest,  joy  is  sacred,"  and  drew 
him  by  both  hands,  with  a  deal  of  grace 
and  tenderness,  into  the  little  parlor,  and 
closed  the  door. 

Pinder  and  Deborah  looked  at  each  other 
long  and  expressively,  and  by  an  instinct 
of  sympathy  met  at  the  counter  as  soon  as 
the  parlor  door  closed,  Deborah  very  red, 
and  her  eyes  glittering,  Pinder  ghastly 
pale. 

"Well,  Mr.  Pinder,"  said  she,  with 
affected  calm,  but  ill-concealed  bitterness, 
"you  and  I— we  are  two  nobodies  now. 
Three  years'  kindness  of  our  side  goes  for 
nothing,  and  three  years'  desertion  don't 
count  against  him.  I've  heard  that  ab- 
sence makes  the  heart  grow  fonder,  and 
now  'tis  to  be  seen." 

Pinder  apologized  for  his  idol.  "  She 
can't  help  it,"  said  he.  "But  I  can  help 
looking  on.  I've  seen  them  meet,  after 
him  abandoning  her  this  three  years,  and 
what  I  feel  this  moment  will  last  me  all 
my  time.  I  won't  stay  to  watch  them  to- 
gether, like  the  devil  grinning  at  Adam 
and  Eve;  and  I  won't  wait  to  hear  him 
say  that  this  business  I  have  enlarged  is 
his,  the  trade  that  he  killed  and  I  have  re- 
vived is  his,  that  the  woman  is  his,  and 
the  child  is  his,  and  the  money  we  have 
saved  is  his.  No,  Deborah,  I'll  give  her 
my  blessing  and  go,  soon  as  ever  I  have 
put  up  those  shutters  for  her,  and  it  is 
about  time.  You  will  see  Joseph  Pinder 
in  this  place  no  more." 

"What!  you  will  desert  hei  and  all?" 

"  Desert  her?  That  is  not  the  word.  I 
leave  her  when  she  is  happy.  I  am  only 
her  friend  in  trouble." 

"And  not  her  friend  in  danger  then?" 

"I  see  no  danger  just  at  present." 

"Think  a  bit,  my  man.  What  has 
brought  him  home?     Answer    me    that." 

"Well,     I    can,"    said    he.     "There   is       ^ 
plenty   of   attraction    to    bring   any   man 
home  that  is  not  blind,  and  mad,  and  an 
idiot." 

"Ay,"  said  she,  "that  is  hew  you  look 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


at  her;  but  it's  him  I  want  you  to  read. 
Why,  it  was  three  years  since  he  left,  but 
it's  not  a  month  since  that  Varney  told 
him  she  was  a  rich  woman,  and  here  he 
is  directly." 

"  Oh !"  said  honest  Joe  Pinder,  "  I  see 
what  you  are  driving  at;  but  that  may  be 
accidental.  Tilings  fall  together  like  that. 
We  mustn't  be  bad  hearted,  neither.  Why, 
surely  he  can't  be  so  base." 

"He  is  no  worse  than  he  was,  and  no 
better,  you  may  be  sure.  Crossing  the 
water  can't  change  a  man's  skin,  nor  his 
heart  neither,  and  I  tell  you  he  has  come 
here  disguised  as  a  gentleman  fur  the  thing 
he  came  for  disguised  as  a  burglar." 

Here  she  tapped  the  safewitb  the  key 
of  the  kitchen  door,  which  she  had  in  her 
hand,  ami  that  action  ami  the  ring  of  the 
metal  made  her  reasoning  tell  wonderfully. 
She  followed  up  her  advantage,  and  as- 
sured Pinder  that  if  lie  did  not  stay  and 
lend  her  his  support,  Sarah  would  soon  be 
stripped  bare  and  then  abandoned  again. 

"  If  he  does,"  said  Pinder,  "111  kill  him, 
thai  is  all." 

"With  all  my  heart,"  was  Deborah's 
reply.     "  But  you  mustn't  leave  her.    And 

then,"  said  she,  "'here's  me.      You  that  is 

so  g l-natured,  would  you  leave   to 

fight  against  the  pair?  To  be  sure,  I  am 
cook,  and  my  kitchen  is  overrun  with  rats: 
and  one  penn'orth  of  white  arsenic  would 
rid  the  place  of  them  and  the  two-legged 
vermin  and  all." 

Pinder  was  shocked,  and  begged  her 
solemnly  never  to  harbor  such  thoughts 
for  a    moment. 

"Then  don't  you  leave  me  alone  with 
my  thoughts,"  said  she,  "for  I  hate  him 
with  all  my  heart  and  soul." 

The  discussion  did  not  end  there;  and,  to 
be  brief,  Deborah  had  the  best  of  it  to  the 
end.  Pinder,  however,  was  for  once  dog- 
gedly resolved  to  consider  his  own  feelings 
as  well  as  Sarah's  interests.  He  would  go ; 
but  conseuted  not  to  leave  the  town,  and 
to  look  in  occasionally,  just  to  see  whether 
Sarah  was  being  pillaged. 

"But,"  said  be,  "if  'tis  all  one  to  you,  I 
will  come  to  the  kitchen,  not  the  shop." 

The  ready-witted  Deborah  literally  and 


without  a  metaphor  licked  her  lips  at  him 
when  he  proposed  this,  so  hearty  was  her 
appetite  for  a  tete-a-tete  or  two  in  her 
own  kitchen  with  this  Joseph  Pinder;  he 
had  pleased  her  eye  from  the  first  moment 
she  saw  him. 

She  said,  "Well,  so  do.  'What  the  eye 
don't  see  the  heart  don't  grieve.'  Leave 
hint  the  shop,  and  you  come  in  the  kitchen." 

With  this  understanding  Pinder  put  up 
the  shutteis  and  went  away,  sick  at  heart. 
Deborah  had  half  a  mind  to  stay  in  her 
kitchen,  so  odious  to  her  was  the  sight  of 
her  brother-in-law;  and,  besides,  she  was 
jealous  :  however,  her  courage  was  a  qual- 
ity that  came  and  went.  She  was  afraid 
to  declare  war  on  the  pair,  with  nobody 
on  the  spot  to  hack  her.  So  she  tempo- 
rized; she  took  Lucy  into  the  parlor  to  wel- 
come her  father.  The  child  said,  "How 
d'ye  do,  papa?"  in  rather  an  oil  hand  way, 
and  was  kissed  overflowingly.  She  did 
not  respond  one  bit,  and  began  imme- 
diately to  fire  questions:  "Why  did  you 
go  away  so  long,  and  make  mamma  fret? 
Why  didn't  you  write  to  her,  if  you 
couldn't  come?" 

Sarah  stopped  the  rest  of  the  cross-ex- 
amination  with  her  hand,  and  told  Lucy 
it  was  not  for  her  to  question  her  father. 
Deborah  never  moved  a  muscle,  but 
chuckled   inwardly. 

"  What  will  you  have  for  supper,  now 
thai  you  are  come?"  inquired  she,  with 
affected  graciousness. 

"  Anything  you  like,"  said  James,  po- 
litely.     "Don't  make  a  stranger  of  me." 

That  evening  the  reunited  couple  spent 
in  sweet  reminiscences  and  the  renewal  of 
conjugal  ardor. 

Before  morning,  however,  they  had 
talked  of  everything — at  all  events,  Sarah 
had,  and  being  grateful  to  Pinder,  and 
anxious  to  make  her  benefactor  and  her 
husband  friends,  had  revealed  the  results 
of  Joseph's  faithful  service  and  intelli- 
gence— the  shop  purchased,  and  £440  in 
the  bank. 

"  At  what  interest?"  inquired  James. 

"Ob,  no  interest.  I  am  waiting  to  buy 
land  or  a  good  house  with  it." 

James  laughed,  and  said  "that  was  En- 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


63 


gland  all  over — to  let  money  lie  dead  for 
which  ten  per  cent  could  be  had  in  the 
United  States  on  undeniable  security." 

When  once  he  got  upon  this  subject 
he  was  eloquent;  descanted  on  the  vast 
opportunities  offered  both  to  industry  and 
capital  in  the  United  States ;  bade  her  ob- 
serve how  he  had  improved  his  condition 
by  industry  alone. 

"But  with  capital,"  said  he,  "I  could 
soon  make  you  a  lady." 

"Lucy  you  might,"  said  she,  "but  I 
shall  live  and  die  a  simple  woman." 

Finding  she  listened  to  him,  he  returned 
to  the  subject  again  and  again;  but  I  do 
not  think  it  necessary  to  give  the  dialogue 
in  extenso.  There  is  a  certain  monotony 
in  the  eloquence  of  speculation,  and  the 
sensible  objections  of  humdrum  prudence. 
I  spare  the  reader  these,  having  sworn  not 
to  be  trivoluminous. 

It  was  about  twelve  o'clock  next  day 
when  Pinder,  whose  occupation  was  gone, 
and  ennui  and  deadness  of  heart  substi- 
tuted, found  the  time  so  heavy  on  his 
hands  that  he  must  come  and  chat  with 
Deborah  in  her  kitchen.  He  looked  in; 
she  was  not  there.  So  then  he  peeped  in 
timidly  at  the  shop  window,  and  there  she 
was  in  sole  possession  of  the  counter.  Her 
qualifications  for  that  post  were  as  well 
known  to  him  as  to  the  readers  of  this  tale, 
so  he  looked  surprised. 

"Why,  where  are  they  all?" 

"In  Cupid's  bower,"  said  Deborah,  re- 
peating a  phrase  out  of  a  daily  paper. 
"  Billing  and  cooing  are  sweeter  than 
business." 

"  Where's  Lucy?" 

"  You  are  the  first  that  has  asked.  Well, 
she  is  asleep  upstairs.  My  lady  found  her- 
self neglected  first  time  this  three  years,  so 
she  came  and  cried  to  me,  and  I  took  her 
in  my  arms  and  laid  her  on  the  bed.  She's 
all  right.  Pity  grown-up  peojjle  can't  go 
to  sleep  when  they  like  and  forget." 

At  this  moment  the  parlor  door  opened, 
and  Sarah  Mansell,  who  had  worn  noth- 
ing but  black  these  three  years,  emerged, 
beaming  in  a  blue  dress  with  white  spots, 
and  a  lovely  bonnet,  all  gay  and  charm- 
ing.    This  bright  vision  banished  Debo- 


rah's discontent  in  a  moment.  "Well," 
said  she,  "you  are  a  picture."  Sarah 
stopped  to  be  looked  at,   and  smiled. 

"Well,"  said  Deborah,  "he  has  found 
a  way  to  make  us  all  glad  he  is  come 
home. " 

Sarah  smiled  affectionately  on  her,  and 
said  she  only  wished  she  could  make  every- 
body as  happy  as  she  was. 

"  Why  not?"  said  Deborah,  playing  the 
courtier  to  please  her.  "And  where  are 
you  going   so  pert,  I  wonder?" 

"To  the  bank,  to  draw  my  money,"  re- 
plied Sarah,  gayly. 

Pinder  and  Deborah  looked  at  one  an- 
other. 

"  How  much  of  it?"  asked  Deborah. 

"Four  hundred  pounds,"  said  the  wife, 
brightly. 

Pinder  groaned,  but  was  silent.  Debo- 
rah threw  up  her  hands. 

"Oh,  Sarah!"  said  she,  piteously,  "do 
but  think  how  long  it  has  taken  you  to 
make  that,  and  don't  throw  it  into  a  well 
all  at  one  time." 

Sarah  smiled  superior.  "  I  affronted  him 
about  money  three  years  ago,  and  you  see 
what  came  of  it." 

She  was  going  out  jauntily,  neither 
angry  nor  in  any  way  affected  by  her 
friends'  opposition,  when  Pinder  put  in 
a  serious  word. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "give  him  a  good  slice. 
But  do  pray  leave  a  little  for  Lucy.  You 
are  a  mother  as  well  as  a  wife." 

She  turned  on  him  at  the  door  with  sud- 
den wrath,  to  crush  him  with  a  word  for 
daring  to  teach  her  her  duty  as  a  mother; 
then  she  remembered  all  she  owed  him, 
and  restrained  herself.  But  what  a  look 
flashed  from  her  eyes!  and  the  hot  blood 
mounted  to  her  temples. 

Pinder  was  quite  staggered  at  such  a 
look  from  her,  and  Deborah  shook  her 
head.  They  both  felt  they  were  nullities, 
and  James  Mansell  the  master  again.  He 
let  them  know  it  too.  He  had  been  quietly 
listening  on  the  stairs  to  every  word  they 
had  said  to  his  wife,  and  he  now  stepped 
into  the  shop,  and  took  up  a  commanding 
position  on  the  public  side  of  the  counter, 
opposite  Pinder  and  Deborah.     They  were 


04 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


standing  behind  the  counter  at  some  dis- 
tance from  each  other. 

It  was  Pinder  he  attacked.  Said  he, 
quietly.  "  Are  you  going  to  meddle  again 
between  man  and  wife?  It  didn't  answer 
last  time,  did  it?" 

Pinder  did  not  think  it  advisable  to  quar- 
rel if  it  could  be  helped,  so  he  said  not  a 
word. 

But  Deborah  was  not  so  discreet.  "  Why, 
you  have  allowed  him  to  meddle  this  three 
years.  You  pillaged  and  deserted  her;  he 
interfered,  and  made  her  fortune.  Ho 
doesn't  meddle  to  mar." 

Then  Pinder  spok<\  but  in  a  more  pacific 
tone.  "I  don't  want  to  meddle  at  all,"  said 
he.  "But  Deborah  and  1  have  done  our 
best  for  you  both,  and  1  do  tliink  your 
wife's  friends  might  be  allowed  to  ask 
what  is  to  be  done  in  one  day  with  the 
savings  of  three  years."  Before  these 
words  were  out  of  his  mouth  Mansell 
registered  a  secret  vow  to  get  rid  of  him 
and  Deborah  both. 

lie    replied,    with    1  1  le  ]  lltelltioll  of  galling 

them  to  the  quick,  "  Well,  I  don't  know 
that  the  master  is  bound  to  tell  the  serv- 
ants what  be  does  with  bis  moiu  \ 

•'  Tour  money?"  snorted  Deborah. 

"Ay,"  said  this  imperturbable  person. 
"My  wife's  money  is  mine.  1  thought  I 
had  made  you  understand  that  last  time. 
Well,  what  I  am  going  to  do  with  my 
money  is  to  invest  it  in  American  securi- 
ties at  ten  per  cent,  instead  of  letting  it  lie 
idle  in  an  English  bank." 

"  Oh !"  said  Deborah.  "  That  is  the  tale 
you  have  been  telling  her,  eh?  Well,  I 
mean  to  tell  her  the  truth.  You  are  going 
to  collar  her  money  and  off  to  America 
directly.  Varney  has  been  here  and  split 
on  you.  You  came  for  the  money,  not  the 
woman." 

She  flung  these  words  in  his  face  so  vio- 
lently that  even  his  brazen  cheek  flushed 
as  if  she  had  struck  him;  but  ere  he  could 
reply.  Sarah  stood  aghast  in  the  doorway. 
"Oh,  dear!  high  words  already." 

Then  James  Mansell,  who,  in  his  way, 
was  cleverer  than  any  of  them,  recovered 
his  composure  in  a  moment,  and  said, 
quietly,   "Not  on  my  side,  I  assure  you. 


But  this  young  woman  says  I  have  come 
for  your  money,  not  for  you.  That's  a 
pretty  thing  to  bawl  at  a  man  for  all  the 
street  to  hear.  Well,  Sarah,  I  don't  bawl 
at  Tier,  hut  I  put  it  to  you  quietly — how 
can  I  live  in  the  same  house  with  people 
that  hate  me,  and  are  on  the  watch  to 
poison  my  wife's  mind  against  me?" 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Pinder  and  Deborah  both  felt  they  had 
met  their  match.  Pinder  held  his  peace; 
but  Deborah  couldn't.  Her  lips  trembled, 
but  sbe  fought  him  to  the  last.  "I  shall 
leave  this  bouse  at  one  word  from  my  sis- 
ter; but  not  at  the  bidding  of  a  stranger 
that's  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow,  as 
si  ion  as  he  has  milked  the  cow  and  bled  the 
calf."  With  a  grand  swet  ping  gesture  of 
the  left  arm  sbe  indicated  Sarah  as  the 
cow,  and  with  her  right,  Lucy  as  (be  calf. 

The  tremendous  words,  and  the  vulgar 
yet  free  and  large  gestures  with  which  she 
drove  them  home,  made  even  Binder  say. 
"  ( >h  !"  and  so  upset  Mansell's  cunning  self- 
command  that  he  came  at  her  furiously. 
But  Sarah  stopped  him.  "No,  you  shall 
not  answer  her,  James.  You  go  and  take 
your  daughter  on  your  knee,  and  I'll  tell 
these  two  my  mind."  Sbe  was  so  grave 
and  dignified  there  was  no  resistance. 

Mansell  retired  with  Lucy,  and  went  up 
the  stairs. 

When  he  was  quite  gone,  Sarah  put  out 
her  two  hands  and  said,  sweetly,  "Come 
here,  you  two."  Then  they  each  took  a 
hand,  and  their  eyes  glistened. 

She  took  them  gently  to  task  in  silvery 
accents,  that  calmed  and  soothed  them  as 
they  fell.  "  You  have  a  true  affection  for 
me,  both  of  j_ou.  Then  pity  me  too,  and 
don't  drive  me  into  a  corner.  Do  not  make 
me  choose  between  my  husband  and  you; 
you  know  which  I  must  choose.  Why, 
dear  heart,  if  I  spent  my  money  on  my 


i  3 


SING LEHE ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


65 


back,  you  would  not  grudge  it  me.  Then 
why  not  let  me  please  my  heart,  and  give 
my  money  where  I  give  my  love,  that  is 
worth  more  than  £400  if  you  could  but  see 
it." 

They  were  both  subdued  by  her  words. 
Deborah  said,  in  a  sort  of  broken,  helpless 
way,  to  Piuder,  "She  doesn't  understand." 

"  What  we  mean  is,  that  if  you  part 
with  your  money,  you  will  lose  your  man ; 
but  so  long  as  you  stick  to  your  money,  he 
will  stay  with  you;  and  we  have  both  seen 
how  you  can  fret  for  him,  when  he  does 
desert  you  as  well  as  bleed  you." 

"Ay,"  said  Sarah,  nobly,  and  without 
anger.  "You  mean  me  well,  but  you 
doubt  and  mistrust,  and  suspect.  No 
offense  to  either  of  you,  but  your  nature 
is  not  mine.  I  am  single-hearted.  I  can 
not  love  and  mistrust.  Nor  I  could  not 
mistrust  and  love." 

The  beauty  of  her  mind  and  the  sweet- 
ness of  her  strong  but  sober  words  over- 
powered her  old  lover  and  tender  friend. 
"Don't  harass  her  any  more,"  said  he. 
"  She  is  too  good  for  this  world.  She  is 
an  angel." 

Deborah  smiled,  and  after  taking  a  good 
look  at  her  sister,  said  coolly,  "  She  is  a 
wonderful  good  woman ;  her  face  would 
tell  one  that;  but  she  is  a  woman,  you 
may  be  sure,  like  her  mother  before  her. 
Sarah,  'tis  no  use  beating  about  the  bush 
any  longer.  Would  you  like  that  £400  to 
go  to  another  woman?" 

"  Another  woman !"  cried  the  supposed 
angel,  firing  up  directly.  "  What  do  you 
mean?     What  other  woman?" 

"  Dick  Varney  saw  him  with  a  woman, 
and  a  handsome  one." 

"Well,  what  does  that  prove?" 

"Not  much  by  itself;  but  a  man  that 
leaves  one  woman  for  three  years,  at  his 
•  time  of  life,  is  safe  to  take  on  with  an- 
other." 

"Oh!"  cried  Sarah,  "don't  tell  me 
so." 

But  Deborah  was  launched.  She  said, 
"It's  all  a  mystery,  and  against  nature,  if 
there's  no  other  woman ;  but,  if  there's  an- 
other, it's  all  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff.  Three 
years'  dead  silence  and  neglect — another 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


woman — you  fretting  in  England — no  other 
man  (Mr.  Pinder  is  only  a  friend) — he  jolly 
as  a  sand-boy  in  New  York — another  wo- 
man— she  wants  money  (t'other  woman  al- 
ways does) — Dick  Varney  tells  him  you've 
got  it — he's  here  in  one  month  after  that, 
and  the  first  day  he  is  here  he  drains  the 
cow.  American  insecurities? — A  Yankee 
gal  !" 

This  time  her  rude  eloquence  and  homely 
sense  carried  all  before  them.  Sarah,  whose 
face  had  changed  with  the  poison  of  jeal- 
ousy, lost  all  her  Madonna-like  calmness. 
She  was  almost  convulsed;  she  moaned 
aloud,  "If  it  is  so,  Heaven  help  me!" 
She  put  her  hand  to  her  bosom,  and  her 
beautiful  brown  eyes  half  disappeared  up- 
ward, and  showed  an  excess  of  white. 
"  Oh,  sister,  you  have  put  a  viper  in  my 
bosom — Doubt.  It  will  gnaw  away  my 
heart. " 

"  Heaven  forbid !"  cried  Deborah,  terri- 
fied at  her  sister's  words,  and  still  more 
at  her  strange  looks.  Then  she  began  to 
blame  her  woman's  tongue,  and  beg 
Sarah  to  dismiss  her  suspicions  with 
contempt.  But  this  was  met  by  another 
change,  almost  as  remarkable  in  its  way. 
"No,"  said  Sarah,  with  iron  firmness,  "I 
could  not  love  and  doubt,  and  live.  I'll 
put  it  to  the  test."  Deborah  looked  amazed 
and  puzzled.  Sarah  walked  to  the  parlor 
door  and  called  up  the  stairs,  "  James,  dear, 
please  come  here." 

"  Whatever  will  she  do  or  say?"  groaned 
Deborah,  and  began  to  shiver.  Sarah  came 
back  to  her  and  said,  in  a  sort  of  hissing 
whisper,  "  Now,  since  you  have  taught  me 
to  suspect  and  distrust,  and  doubt,  you 
must  go  a  little  further.  I  bid  you  watch 
my  husband's  face,  and  his  very  body, 
while  I  that  am  his  wife  play  upon  him." 
She  hung  her  head,  ashamed  of  what  she 
was  going  to  do.  But  Deborah  said, 
roughly,   "Won't  I?    that's  all." 

James  Mansell  came  in  and  cast  a  shrewd 
glance  all  round.  Deborah's  face  told  him 
nothing.  She  wore  an  expression  of  utter 
indifference.     Pinder  hung  his  head. 

Mansell  was  now  between  two  masked 
batteries:  his  wife's  eyes  scanned  him 
pointblank,  and  Deborah  watched  him — ■ 

"3 


66 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


like  a  cat — out  of  the  tail  of  her  eye,  as 
Sarah  tested  her  husband. 

"  James,  dear,  I  have  a  great  affection 
for  my  sister,  and  a  true  respect  for  Joseph 
Pinder,  and  I  owe  them  both  a  debt  of 
gratitude. "  James  looked  rather  gloomy  at 
that.  "  But  I  love  you  better  than  all  the 
world.  I  can't  bear  to  turn  these  faithful 
friends  out  of  the  house;  they  comforted 
me  when  I  was  desolate."  Mausell  looked 
dark  again.  "  And  yet  I  can't  have  you 
made  uncomfortable  for  anybody.  So,  if 
my  company  is  as  welcome  to  you  as 
my  money,  we  will  go  to  America  to- 
gether." 

Pinder  and  Deborah  both  uttered  ex- 
clamations of  surprise  and  dismay,  but 
Deborah's  eye  never  left  James.  He  was 
startled,  but  showed  no  reluctance.  He 
merely  said,   "You  don't  mean  that?" 

"Indeed  I  do;  but  perhaps  you  don't 
want  me.  You  would  rather  go  back 
alone?" 

The  four  eyes  watched. 

•'  No,"  said  James  ;  "  we  have  been  parted 
long  enough.  But  would  you  really  cross 
the  water  with  me?" 

"As  I  would  cross  this  room,  if  you 
really  wanted   me." 

"  ( >f  course  I  want  you,  if  we  are  not  to 
live  together  here,  where  your  friends  hate 
me.  But,  Sally,  if  you  are  game  to  emi- 
grate with  me,  why  make  two  bites  of  a 
cherry?  We  must  sell  the  shop  and  real- 
ize, and  settle  in  the  States  for  life.  I've 
no  friends  here,  and  you'll  never  want  to 
come  to  England  again,  when  once  you 
have  spent  a  summer  in  New  York." 

Here  was  a  poisoned  arrow.  Deborah 
clasped  her  hands  piteously,  and  cried, 
"Oh,  Sarah!" 

Sarah  put  up  one  hand  to  her  to  be 
quiet. 

"No,"  said  she,  as  shortly  and  dryly  as 
if  she  were  chopping  fire-wood,  "  I'll  not 
fling  my  sister  on  the  world  nor  put  all  my 
Lucy's  eggs  in  one  basket.  I  will  risk 
£400  and  no  more.  I  don't  look  to  find 
the  streets  of  New  York  City  paved  with 
gold.  Money  must  be  lost  by  one,  for 
another  to  make  it,  and  the  folk  out  there 
are  as  sharp  as  we  are — sharper,  by  all 


accounts.  Many  go  there  for  wool,  and 
come  back  shorn.  This  shop  is  a  little 
haven  for  us,  if  things  go  wrong  out  there. 
These  good  friends  will  keep  it  warm  for 
us.  Now  I  think  of  it,  doesn't  a  boat  start 
for  New  York  this  evening?" 

"  This  evening!"  cried  Pinder  and  Debo- 
rah in  one  breath. 

"  Ay,  this  very  night — before  affection 
is  soured  by  disputes  and  love  is  poisoned 
by  jealousies."  Then  she  told  James  to 
put  on  his  hat  and  bring  her  word  when 
the  boat  started.  Lucy  and  she  would  he 
ready;  she  could  pack  all  her  clothes  in 
half  an  hour,  with  Deborah  to  help.  Thus 
the  greater  character  asserted  itself  at  last. 
She  had  seen  with  a  woman's  readiness 
that  the  present  position  was  untenable  for 
a  day,  and  she  had  cut  the  knot  with  all 
a  man's  promptitude.  From  that  hour  she 
took  the  lead. 

Deborah  was  wringing  her  hands,  and 
crying,  "Oh,  what  have  I  said?  What 
have  I  done?" 

Sarah  said,  quietly,  "Time  will  show. 
Please  come  and  help  me  pack;  and, 
Joseph,  put  up  the  shutters;  I  trade  no 
more  this  day.  Ah,  well,  1  never  thought 
to  leave  home;  but  no  matter.  A  wife's 
home  is  by  her  husband's  side." 

While  they  were  packing,  and  Deborah's 
tears  bursting  out  every  now  and  then, 
Sarah  said  to  her,  a  little  haughtily, 
"Well,    did   he  stand   the  test?" 

"Yes,"  said  Deborah,  humbly. 

"  Do  you  think  he  would  take  me  to  New 
York  if  there  was  another  woman?"' 

"No"  (very  humbly). 

"But  see,"  said  she,  sorrowfully,  "what, 
it  is  to  rouse  mistrust.  I  shall  sew  the 
notes  into  his  Sunday  waistcoat,  but  I 
shall  not  give  them  to  him  until  we  are 
on  the  sea." 

Deborah  began  to  say,  "And  why — " 
but  she  got  no  further.  She  ended  with, 
"I'm  afraid  to  speak." 

They  got  the  man's  Sunday  waistcoat 
out  of  the  drawer  and  their  quick  fingers 
soon  cut  a  deep  inside  pocket.  Sarah  took 
the  numbers  of  the  notes  and  sewed  in  the 
notes  themselves.  They  packed  the  waist- 
coat for  the  time  being  at  the  bottom  of 


SINGLEHEAET,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


67 


Sarah's  box.  The  packing  was  done  two 
hours  before  the  vessel  sailed. 

The  whole  party  met  again  in  the  parlor 
— Pinder  to  bid  good-by;  but  Mansell,  to 
please  his  wife,  I  suppose,  said,  civilly, 
"No,  no;  come  and  see  us  on  board. 
There  let  us  part  friends ;  the  chances  are 
you  will  never  see  us  again." 

These  words  fell  like  a  knell  on  the  true 
hearts  Sarah  Mansell  left  behind  her. 

Pinder  and  Deborah  saw  the  Mansells 
go  down  the  Mersey,  and  returned  sadly 
to  the  house  that  had  lost  its  sunshine. 

That  night  Deborah,  all  in  tears, 
begged  Pinder  not  to  leave  her  alone  in 
the  house.  She  said  she  could  not  bear  to 
talk  of  anybody  but  Sarah ;  if  she  went  out 
her  friends  would  chatter  about  this,  that, 
and  t'other. 

Pinder  was  of  the  same  mind,  and  gladly 
embraced  the  proposal.  She  gave  him  his 
choice  of  Lucy's  room  or  the  connubial 
chamber.  He  gave  a  little  shudder,  and 
chose  Lucy's.  He  now  became  the  master 
of  the  house  and  the  shop,  and  had  plenty 
on  his  hands.  He  taught  Deborah  the 
prices  of  things,  and  how  to  weigh  and 
put  up  goods  in  paper,  and  that  is  an  art; 
and  at  night  he  read  her  a  journal  or  a 
book,  and  they  talked  of  Sarah,  and  won- 
dered and  wondered  what  would  be  her 
fate.  Deborah  thought  she  would  come 
back  in  about  a  year.  The  £400  would 
not  last  longer  than  that  in  Mansell's 
hands,  and  he  would  be  sure  to  get  hold 
of  it.  But  Pinder  thought  she  would  not 
return  at  all.  James  Mansell  was  evi- 
dently jealous  of  her  friends,  and  deter- 
mined to  have  her  all  to  himself. 

There  was  a  very  good  photograph  of 
her — cabinet  size;  he  took  this  to  Ferranti, 
and  had  it  enlarged,  retouched,  and  tinted 
by  that  artist.  Ferranti,  who  employed 
a  superior  hand  to  retouch  these  enlarge- 
ments under  his  own  eye,  produced  a  mar- 
vel. It  had  the  solidity  and  clean  outline 
of  a  statue.  • 

They  had  it  lightly  tinted,  especially  the 
eyes  and  hair,  so  as  not  to  injure  the  trans- 
parency of  the  photograph ;  and  there  was 
Sarah  Mansell,  full  size,  and  all  but  alive. 

It  arrived,  quite  finished,  rather  late  at 


night,  and  Pinder  was  out ;  but  he  opened 
the  case  and  took  it  out,  and  neither  he  nor 
Deborah  could  go  to  bed  for  gazing  at  it. 
"I  never  knew  how  beautiful  she  was," 
said  Deborah.  They  actually  sat  up  till 
two  o'clock  looking  at  this  reproduction  of 
a  good  and  beautiful  face,  and  they  des- 
canted on  her  virtues,  and  Deborah  told 
incidents  of  her  childhood,  and  Pinder  re- 
peated wise  and  sober  answers  from  her 
sweet  lips. 

Pinder  now  found  himself  gliding  from 
bachelor  life  into  half  matrimonial.  His 
dinner  was  always  ready  on  a  clean  cloth ; 
and  a  comely  woman,  a  year  younger  than 
himself,  cooked  it,  and  put  on  a  clean  apron 
and  cap  to  eat  with  him.  They  supped  to- 
gether, too.  She  gave  up  her  nightly  ex- 
cursions after  a  husband,  and  was  always 
at  his  service,  and  ready  to  talk  to  him, 
or  listen  to  him,  or  both;  for  if  he  read 
aloud  police  cases,  or  other  things  in  which 
men  and  women  revealed  their  characters 
and  the  broad  features  of  human  nature, 
her  comments  were  as  sagacious — especially 
in  relation  to  her  own  sex — as  if  she  had 
devoted  her  life  to  the  study  of  philosophy. 

Sometimes,  too,  she  had  a  look  of  her 
sister.  He  never  expected  to  see  Sarah 
any  more,  and,  take  it  altogether,  he  was 
on  the  road  which,  by  a  gentle  incline, 
has  often  led  the  victim  of  a  romantic 
attachment  to  a  quiet  union  of  affection. 

When  they  were  fairly  out  at  sea,  Sarah 
brought  James  his  waistcoat  and  showed 
him  how  the  notes  were  secured.  "You 
keep  them,"  said  she,  "and  I  keep  the 
numbers." 

Mansell's  greedy  eyes  flashed.  "Well, 
you  are  a  business  woman ;  we  shall  never 
go  wrong  together." 

The  water  was  like  glass  for  eight  days, 
but  then  they  had  a  gale,  and  Mansell  was 
very  ill.  It  was  calm  again  as  they  drew 
near  the  end  of  their  voyage,  but  Mansell 
did  not  regain  his  looks.  When  they 
reached  the  port  he  looked  ill,  pale,  de- 
pressed,  and  worried. 

They  landed,  and  left  their  boxes  in  the 
Custom   House,   and  James  Mansell  told 


68 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Sarah  and  Lucy  to  stay  there,  while  he 
ran  into  a  neighboring  street  to  see  whether 
his  old  lodgings — very  comfortable  ones — 
were  vacant. 

She  called  after  him  not  to  be  long. 
"Mind,  I  am  strange  here,"  said  she. 

"  He  won't  be  long,  I  guess,"  said  a  civil 
officer  standing  bj' ;  then  he  brought  two 
chairs. 

"Thank  you  kindly,  sir,"  said  she. 
"Lucy,  my  dear,  thank  the  gentleman." 
Lucy  took  the  two  steps  her  dancing- 
master  prescribed  as  essential  prelimi- 
naries of  a  courtesy,  and  then  effected 
a  prim  reverence — "Thank  you,   sir." 

The  gentleman,  a  tall,  gaunt  citizen 
from  Illinois,  grinned,  and  struck  a  bow, 
with  bis  hat  in  his  hand,  at  right  angles. 

Sarah  watched  her  husband  take  the 
second  street  to  the  right  and  disappear. 
Then  she  took  out  some  work,  not  to  be 
idle,  and  Lucy  prattled  away,  all  admira- 
tion. Never  had  this  brilliant  city  a  more 
appreciative  critic;.  To  be  sure  she  had 
not  learned  the  suicidal  habit  (if  detraction, 
thanks  to  which  nothing  pleases  us.  and  so 
we  pick  up  nothing. 

An  hour  passed — two  hours — James  did 
not  come  back.  Sarah  was  mortified — then 
she  was  perplexed — then  she  was  alarmed. 
What  if  be  had  gone  drinking !  He  seemed 
exhausted  by  the  voyage.  Once  thi<  fear 
took  possession  of  her,  waiting  there  idle 
became  intolerable  to  her.  She  begged 
that  civil  officer  to  put  their  boxes  aside 
for  a  time,  and  she  took  Lucy  by  the  hand 
and  followed  in  the  direction  her  husband 
had  taken.  But  as  she  walked  for  hours 
before  she  found  her  treasure,  I  ask  leave 
to  go  before  her  to  a  certain  street. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Solomon  B.  Grace,  the  man  who  was 
so  civil  to  Sarah  Mansell  at  the  Custom 
House,    was,    in   his  way,   a  rough   and 


sturdy  example  of  the  species  Pinder; 
and  on  his  way  to  and  from  the  Custom 
House  he  used  always  to  stand  stock-still 
for  two  minutes  and  gaze  at  the  windows 
of  a  house  in  One  Hundred  and  Fourth 
Street,  that  belonged  to  one  Elizabeth 
Haynes.  Two  minutes  is  not  long  for 
a  busy  man  to  spare  to  the  past,  and 
Solomon  had  never  been  detected  at  the 
weakness.  But  to-day  Elizabeth  Haynes 
caught  sight  of  him  as  she  put  on  her  bon- 
net at  a  glass  to  go  out,  and  when  she  did 
come  out  at  the  door,  there  he  was  gazing 
at  the  windows. 

Mrs.  1 1  aynes  was  a  handsome,  gay  young 
woman,  of  a  genial  disposition.  She  knew 
very  well  what  Solomon  was  up  to,  but  use- 
less sentiment  was  not  her  line. 

"Well,"  said  she,  feigning  astonish- 
ment, "  is  that  you,  Mr.  Grace,  standing 
there  like  a  petrified  policeman?"  Solo- 
mon was  too  confounded  to  answer.  "  Per- 
haps  you  want  apartments;"  and  she 
pointed   to  the  card   in   the   window. 

"  Perhaps  I  wanted  a  sight  of  the  lady 
that  lets  'em." 

"Then  why  not  knock  at  the  door  and 
ask  for  the  lady?" 

"  Wa'al,  I  guess  rejected  suitors  ain't 
always  the  most  welcome  callers." 

"  Why  not?  If  they  behave  themselves, 
do  you  really  think  any  woman  hates  a 
man  for  having  been  a  little  sweet  on  her? 
Next  time  don't  watch  the  premises,  but 
walk  right  in  and  tell  me  the  news  from 
out  West." 

"Wa'al,"  said  he,  hesitating,  "ye  see,  I 
don't  want  no  fuss.  Now,  there's  some- 
body in  that  house  that  riles  me.  He  has 
got  a  good  thing,  and  doesn't  vally  it.  He 
gambles  away  all  your  money,  and  he  is 
never  at  home.  You  were  married  to  one 
Illinois  man,  and  he  respected  you  and 
loved  you ;  and  what  mad  dog  bit  j-ou  that 
you  must  go  and  marry  a  stranger?  You 
had  the  whole  State  to  pick  from." 

"And  Mr.  Solomon  Grace  in  particular! 
You  forget  I'm  a  stranger  myself.  I'm 
not  annexed  to  your  State." 

Solomon  admitted  this,  but  said  it  was 
an  oversight  in  the  Constitootion. 

"Now  this,"  said  she,  "is  why  rejected 


SINGLEHEAET,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


69 


suitors  are  not  welcome  to  prudent  women 
and  good  wives.  They  must  run  down 
the  man  we  have  chosen,  and  behind  his 
back,  too,  nine  times  out  of  ten." 

"  I'm  darned  if  it  isn't  mean — as  mean 
as  dirt." 

This  concession  seemed  so  creditable  that 
she  invited  him  to  be  her  beau — as  far  as 
the  market. 

Solomon  could  not  believe  his  good 
fortune.  She  laughed  at  him,  and  en- 
lightened him.  "  Give  me  a  fair  excuse, 
do  you  think  I  wouldn't  rather  have  a 
decent  man  beside  me  than  take  my  walks 
alone?  What  a  bad  opinion  you  must 
have  of  woman's  sense!  I  do  suppose 
that  gentleman  you  are  named  after 
knew  'em  better.  To  be  sure,  he  had 
six  hundred  teachers,   poor  man!" 

"I  would  give  his  lot  for  my  one." 

"Solomon,"  said  Mrs.  Haynes,  severely, 
"flattery  is  poison,  so  come  on.  I  won't 
stand  still  to  be  poisoned."  So  she  went 
shopping,  and  continued  at  it  long  after 
she  had  parted  with  Solomon  Grace. 

Mrs.  Mansell  wandered  on  and  on,  and 
then  back,  to  and  fro,  Lucy  prattling  gay- 
ly,  and  almost  irritating  her,  until  she 
turned  hungry.  Then  her  mother  bought 
her  a  piece  of  pie  with  the  only  coin  in  her 
pocket,  but  could  not  eat  herself.  Night 
fell,  the  lamps  were  lighted;  foot-sore, 
weary,  and  sick  at  heart,  she  could  hardly 
draw  her  limbs  along,  and  began  to  ask 
herself  bitterly  what  she  had  done  to  be 
abandoned  again  and  again  by  everybody. 
But  in  truth  she  was  not  abandoned  by  all ; 
a  wise  and  just  Providence  was  guiding 
her  every  step.  At  last  she  stopped  in 
despair,  and  began  to  speak  her  mind  to 
Lucy,  since  there  was  no  one  else. 

"It  is  inconsiderate,  it  is  cruel,"  said 
she,  "  and  me  a  stranger  in  this  great  city. 
Why  couldn't  he  take  me  up  with  him  to 
look  for  lodgings?  Oh,  Lucy,  my  mind 
misgives  me." 

"  Sit  down  on  those  steps,  mamma,"  said 
Lucy,  with  pretty  affection. 

"  Indeed  I  shall  be  glad  to  rest  a  bit." 

She  sat  down  on  the  doorsteps,  and 
thoughts    tormented    her    she    could   not 


utter  to  Lucy.  This  must  be  their  old 
enemy,  Drink.  He  had  looked  so  pale  and 
exhausted.  Oh,  if  it  was!  Misery!  for 
the  habit  once  resumed,  after  so  long  ab- 
stinence, would  never  be  got  rid  of.  Here 
was  a  miserable  prospect,  and  in  a  foreign 
land  as  well :  no  friends  to  curb  him  or 
stand  by  her.  And  then,  if  he  got  drunk 
he  would  be  robbed.  How  lucky  she  had 
sewed  up  the  notes  in  his  waistcoat !  The 
money !  Another  chill  thought  went 
through  her  like  an  ice-bolt.  Why  had 
she  parted  with  it?  She  had  been  warned 
that  while  she  held  it  she  held  her  husband. 
It  was  but  a  momentary  horror.  She  dis- 
missed that  suspicion  as  unworthy  and 
monstrous,  and  was  ashamed  of  herself 
for  harboring  so  base  a  fear. 

Lucy  saw  the  change  in  her  distressed 
face,  and  came  to  a  simple,  comprehensive 
conclusion :  "  Mamma,  he  is  a  wicked  man." 

Sarah  was  shocked  at  this  from  her. 
"No,  no,  my  child;  he  is  a  good  man, 
and  your  father." 

"Then  fathers  don't  love  us  like  uncles 
do.  Uncle  Joe  would  never  have  left  us 
like  this.     I  wish  I  had  never  left  home." 

Sarah  wrould  not  say  that ;  but  she  sighed 
deeply,  and  rocked  herself,  country  fashion, 
sitting  on  the  stone  steps. 

Mrs.  Haynes  came  back  to  her  tea,  and 
found  her  in  that  condition,  while  Lucy, 
standing  beside  her,  opened  two  glorious 
eyes  with  sorrowful  amazement.  For  a 
moment  Mrs.  Haynes  thought  they  were 
beggars,  but  the  next  her  eye  took  in  al- 
most at  one  glance  their  dress  and  neat 
appearance,  and  Lucy's  ear-rings,  pearl 
and  gold. 

She  asked  Mrs.  Mansell  civilly  what  was 
the  matter — was  she  tired? 

Mrs.  Mansell  looked  up,  and  said,  sor- 
rowfully, that  she  was  in  care  and  trouble. 
She  had  lost  her  husband. 

"What,  dead?" 

"  Nay,  Heaven  forbid !  But  we  parted 
on  the  quay.  He  went  to  look  for  lodg- 
ings, and  he  never  came  back.  I  don't 
know  what  to  think  nor  what  to  do,  I'm 
sure." 

"Dear  me,"  said  the  other;  "and  you  a 
stranger  in  the  country !" 


?(» 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


Sarah  sighed. 

"  And  it  is  late  for  the  child  to  be  out." 

Sarah  gave  her  a  glance  of  maternal 
gratitude,  and  passed  her  arm  round  her 
child  at  the  very  idea  of  any  harm  threat- 
ening her. 

Mrs.  Karnes  looked  well  at  them  both, 
and  liked  their  faces  even  better  than  their 
appearance.  She  said,  good  -  naturedly, 
"  You  had  better  step  in  and  rest  your- 
selves a  while,  and  then  we'll  see." 

"Thank  you  kindly,  ma'am;  I'm  sure 
it  is  very  good  of  you." 

Mrs.  Haynes  opened  the  door  with  a 
latch-key  and  led  the  way  to  a  back  room 
of  mixed  character.  There  was  a  French 
bed  in  it,  with  curtains  descending  from  a 
circular  frame.  There  was  also  a  chest  of 
drawers,  ami  a  sort  of  plate-chest  on  them; 
a  large  easy-chair,  much  worn;  and  a  round 
table,  witli  a  white  cloth  on  it — in  short,  it 
was  an  unpretending  snuggery. 

"  There,  take  off  your  bonnets  and  make 
yourselves  comfortable,"  said  Mrs.  Haynes. 
And  while  they  were  doing  this,  she  whis- 
pered  an  order  to  her  maid — her  name  was 
Millicent.  Then  she  took  cups  and  saucers 
out  of  a  cupboard  and  wiped  them  herself; 
and  they  talked  all  this  while,  she  anil  Mis. 
Mansell. 

A  housekeeper's  vanity  is  always  on  the 
alert  the  moment  a  possible  rival  comes; 
so  as  Mrs.  Mansell  looked  like  a  person 
with  a  house  of  her  own,  Mrs.  Haynes 
said,  "You  mustn't  go  by  this  room:  mine 
is  a  beautiful  house,  but  I  take  lodgers, 
and  it  is  so  full  that  I  have  to  pig  any- 
where. It  doesn't  matter  much,  you 
know,   when  one's  husband  is  away." 

Lucy  listened,  and  informed  her  mother, 
with  some  surprise,  that  the  young  lad}' 
was  married. 

'•Why,  bless  the  child,  I  have  been 
married  twice.  The  first  was  an  Illinois 
man.  Ah!  be  was  a  husband!  This 
time  it  is  Matthew  Haynes,  an  English- 
man. I  can't  show  him  you,  for  he  has 
gone  home  to  draw  a  legacy,  and  that 
takes  time."  She  paused  a  moment  to 
pour  out  the  tea. 

"  Are  you  a  New  York  lad}*,  if  you 
please?"  inquired  Sarah. 


Mrs.  Haynes,  poising  the  tea-pot  in  the 
air,  smiled  at  her  simplicity.  "No,"  said 
she.  "Are  you?  Why,  we  both  speak 
country  English  as  broad  as  a  barn-door. 
Bless  your  heart,  I  knew  you  for  a  coun- 
try-woman the  moment  you  opened  your 
mouth,  and  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  we 
came  from  the  very  same  part.  I  be  Wilt- 
shire." 

"And  I'm  Barkshire,  born  and  bred." 

"Didn't  I  tell  'ee?" 

Here  Millicent  came  in  with  a  large 
dish  of  fried  oysters. 

"  Y"ii  don't  get  such  oysters  as  these  in 
Barkshire,  let  me  tell  ye." 

•"That  we  don't.  I  never  saw  so  many 
all  at  one  time." 

The  hostess  helped  them  liberally,  and 
the  wanderers  enjoyed  them  to  the  full, 
and  their  eyes  brightened,  and  the  color 
came  back  to  their  faces,  and  when,  like 
a  tun  wife,  Mrs.  Haynes  said,  "Now  tell 
me  about  yours,"  Mrs.  Mansell  was  more 
communicative  than  she  would  have  b©  n 
to  an  older  acquaintance. 

"Oh,  my  man  is  an  excellent  husband. 
Indeed,  he  hasn't  a  fault  that  I  know  >A', 
except  he  lakes  a  drop  now  and  then." 

"'  Oh,  they  all  do  that  at  odd  times,"  said 
the  other,  carelessly. 

"And  even  that  he  has  given  up,"  said 
Sarah,  earnestly.  "  Only  he  was  so  ill  at 
sea  and  exhausted  like.  How  else  to  ac- 
count for  his  behavior,  I  can't  think;  and 
you  know  they  are  sometimes  obliged  to 
take  a  glass  medicinal." 

"  Ay,  that  is  their  chat ;  and  'tis  the  only 
medicine  where  one  glass  leads  to  another. 
There,  don't  you  begin  to  fret  again.  You'll 
see  yours  long  before  I  shall  see  mine.'' 
Then  she  observed  that  Lucy  could  not 
keep  her  eyes  open.  So  she  went  farther 
than  she  had  intended  at  first;  she  deter- 
mined to  let  them  sleep  in  the  house. 
"Take  your  bonnets,"  said  she,  "and 
come  with  me."  She  opened  one  of  two 
folding-doors,  and  showed  .them  into  a 
larger  parlor,  with  a  bachelor's  bed  in  it. 
The  carpet  was  up,  and  stood  in  a  roll,  but 
everything  was  clean.  "There,  this  room 
islet,  but  not  till  twelve  to-morrow;  you 
must  excuse  disorder.     You  put  the  little 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


n 


love  to  bed,  and  then  we  will  have  our  chat 
out.  Ah,"  said  she,  with  a  sudden  change 
of  manner  that  was  sweet  and  touching, 
"  I  had  a  little  girl  by  my  first  husband ; 
she  would  be  about  the  age  of  yours  if  I 
could  have  kept  her  alive;  so  my  heart 
warmed  to  yours  the  moment  I  saw  her 
standing  beside  you  on  my  step,  and  her 
young  eyes  full  of  love  and  trouble." 

Mrs.  Haynes  cried  a  little  at  this  picture 
and  her  own  sad  reminiscences,  and  the 
happy  mother  kissed  the  sorrowful  one, 
and  she  kissed  her  in  return.  Then  Mrs. 
Haynes  withdrew  and  summoned  her 
maid,  and  she  cleared  away  the  things, 
and  then  they  cleaned  the  cups  and  saucers 
and  had  a  gossip,  for  Mrs.  Haynes  must 
have  somebody  to  talk  to.  She  was  well 
educated,  not  like  Deborah  Smart:  for  all 
that,  she  never  read  a  book  now,  and  those 
who  won't  read  must  talk. 

The  folding-doors  were  thin,  and  did  not 
meet  very  close ;  the  new  wood  had  shrunk ; 
and  Sarah,  without  intending  it,  heard  a 
word  every  now  and  then,  but  she  paid 
no  attention.  The  first  thing  the  careful 
mother  did  was  to  thrust  her  hand  and 
arm  all  down  the  bed  inside,  and  she  in- 
stantly resolved  not  to  put  her  girl  into 
it.  She  told  her  she  should  not  undress 
her.  So  Lucy  knelt  at  her  knee,  and  said 
her  prayers.  When  she  had  done,  she 
asked  if  she  might  pray  for  the  good 
lady. 

"  Ay  do,  dear,  and  so  shall  I.  It's  all 
we  can  do  for  her."  She  pulled  down  the 
counterpane,  laid  Lucy  on  the  blanket,  and 
put  a  shawl  over  her.  All  this  time  she 
was  thinking,  and  now  her  thoughts  found 
vent.  "  My  girl,  is  it  not  strange  that  those 
who  are  sworn  to  stay  by  us,  and  we  by 
them,  should  fail  us,  and  that  a  lady  who 
never  saw  our  faces  before  should  open  her 
arms  and  her  house  to  us,  because  we  are 
strangers  in  a  foreign  land?  God  bless 
her!" 

There  was  a  loud  knock  at  the  street 
door.  It  was  followed  by  an  eager  ex- 
clamation from  the  other  room:  "Oh, 
Milly!  Why,  sure  that's  my  husband's 
knock." 

"Oh!  I  hope  it  is,  "cried  Sarah,  as  Milli- 


cent  and  her  mistress  clashed  into  the  pas- 
sage. 

There  was  a  moment  of  suspense,  and 
then  joyful  exclamations  in  the  passage. 

"It  is,  Lucy;  I  am  so  glad,"  Sarah 
cried. 

"  So  am  I,  mamma." 

"  This  way  !  this  way !  "  screamed  Mrs. 
Haynes,  pulling  what  seemed  to  Sarah  to 
be  rather  an  undemonstrative  husband  into 
her  little  room.  "  I  must  have  him  all  to 
myself. "  Then  there  was  a  long  and  warm 
embrace. 

Sarah  was  somehow  conscious  of  what 
was  going  on.  She  sat  down  by  Lucy, 
and  said,  a  little  sadly,  "Ay,  they  are 
happy,  those  two."  Then,  cheerfully, 
"Well,  my  turn  must  come." 

Sarah  Mansell  did  not  hear  exactly  what 
was  said  next,  but  I  will  tell  the  reader. 

Mrs.  Haynes,  who  had  now  turned  the 
gas  up,  was  concerned  at  her  husband's 
appearance.  "La,"  said  she,  "how  pale 
you  look!  Sit  down  in  your  own  chair." 
(He  staggered  a  little,  but  got  into  the 
chair  all  right.)  "I'll  make  you  a  cup  of 
tea." 

"  Tea  be  blowed !"  said  he,  roughly. 

Sarah  heard  that  where  she  sat,  with  her 
cheek  against  Lucy's.  She  started  away 
from  her,  half  puzzled,  half  amazed. 

"Gimme — drop  brandy,"  said  the  man, 
louder  still. 

Sarah  bounded  with  one  movement  into 
the  middle  of  the  room,  and  then  stood 
panting.  Even  Lucy  raised  herself  on 
her  hands  in  the  bed,  and  her  eyes  opened 
wide. 

"  I  doubt  you  have  had  enough  of  that 
already,"  was  the  reply  in  the  next  room. 
"  Why,  now  I  think  of  it,  you  must  have 
come  by  the  steamboat  eight  hours  ago. 
How  many  have  you  liquored  with  before 
your  wife's  turn  came?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  he,  like  a  dog's 
bark,  loud  and  sharp  and  sullen. 

Lucy  heard,  and  slipped  off  the  bed  to 
her  mother,  full  of  curiosity.  "  Why, 
mamma,"  said  she,   "that's — ■" 

Before  she  could  say  the  word,  Sarah 
closed  the  child's  mouth  with  her  hand 
almost   fiercely;   then  held  her   tight,  and 


72 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


pressed  the  now  terrified  girl's  face  against 
her  own  body. 

All  the  woman's  senses  were  so  excited 
that  she  heard  through  the  doors  as  if  they 
had  been  paper.  And  this  is  what  she 
heard  this  man  say,  who  was  her  husband 
and  the  husband  of  the  woman  that  had 
sheltered  her : 

"  If  you  must  know,  I  was  faint  and 
troubled  in  my  mind,  and  just  took  one 
glass  to  keep  mj-  heart  up  and  clear  my 
head,  and  then  one  led  to  another.  Never 
you  mind.  I'm  a  good  husband  to  you, 
the  best  in  England — no,  the  best  in  New 
York  —  the  best  in  all  the  world;  d'ye 
hear?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  other  wife,  "I  bear  the 
good  news;  but  please  don't  bawl  it  so 
loud."     Then  she  whispered  something. 

Sarah  caught  her  girl  up  like  a  baby, 
was  at  the  bed  in  a  moment,  laid  her  on 
it,  and  dared  her  to  move  with  such  a  look 
and  such  a  commanding  gesture  as  the  girl 
had  never  seen  before.  Then  hissing  out, 
"I'll  know  all  if  it  kills  me."  she  glided 
back  like  a  serpent  to  the  door.  She  pui 
her  ear  to  the  very  aperture. 

Matthew  Haynes,  alias  James  Man-ell, 
lowered  his  voice.  "You  don't  know  the 
sacrifice,  curse  it  all.  One  drop  of  brandy, 
for  mercy's  sake." 

"Only  one,  then."  She  gave  him  a 
glass.     He  gulped  it  down. 

"Ah!  It  is  no  use  sniveling;  I  didn't 
mean  to  do  it  this  way.  But  it  was  sure 
to  come  to  this.     1  was  in  a  cleft  stick." 

"  Whatever  is  the  man  maundering 
about?"  said  Elizabeth.  "Oh,  cursed 
liquor! " 

The  moment  she  raised  her  voice  he 
raised  his.  "  D'ye  want  to  wrangle?  It 
isn't  for  you  to  grumble!  You  are  all 
right.     I've  got    the    four    hundred 

POUNDS   I   WIRED   YOU   ABOUT!" 

He  uttered  these  words,  not  loudly,  but 
very  impressively,  syllable  by  syllable. 

And  syllable  by  syllable  they  seemed  to 
enter  Sarah  Mansell's  body  like  javelins 
made  of  ice.  The  poor  creature  shrank  al- 
together at  first,  and  then  slowly  stretched 
herself  out.  Her  arms  strangely  contorted 
themselves  in  agony,   hut  at   last  spread 


feebly  out,  and  her  hands  clutched  vague- 
1}',  as  if  she  was  on  a  real  cross,  as  well  as 
on  a  cross  of  mental  anguish ;  and  when, 
after  a  few  words  of  explanation,  that  told 
her  nothing  more,  the  other  woman  said: 
"  Well,  you  are  a  good  husband ;  I  must 
kiss  you,"  the  limp  body  and  drooping 
head  of  the  true  wife  sank  helpless  against 
the  door  with  a  strange  sound ;  it  was  gen- 
tle, yet  heavy  and  corpse-like. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Doubleface,  like  others  who  have 
crime  in  hand,  was  startled  by  a  sound 
the  meaning  of  which  he  did  not  know. 
He  thrust  away  his  partner  and  held  her 
at  arm's-length.  "What  is  that'.'"  said 
he. 

"Only  my  lodger,"  said  Elizabeth. 
"I'll  go  and  see  what  she  wants.'" 

She  stepped  toward  the  door,  against 
which  Sarah  was  lying  erect  (I  can  de- 
scribe  it  no  other  way),  not  insensible,  hut 
utterly  limp  and  powerless  to  move,  and 
indeed  conscious  that  if  she  moved  she 
musl  fall  headlong.  At  this  crisis  Double- 
face  turned  jealous  all  of  a  sudden. 

"No,"  said  he;  "bother  your  lodgers! 
I'm  the  master.  Attend  to  me  first.  Here, 
help  me  off  with  my  coat  and  waistcoat. 

"  Ni  >w  give  me  my  dressing  gown.  Now 
my  shoes." 

At  last  he  rolled  into  bed.  Now  Eliza- 
beth Haynes  suspected  her  lodger  of  listen- 
ing, and  she  thought  it  was  too  bad.  She 
resolved  to  catch  her. 

She  took  off  her  shoes  and  stole  on  tiptoe 
from  the  bed  to  the  door.  At  the  same 
moment,  Sarah  Mansell,  having  nothing 
more  to  learn,  made  an  effort  to  escape 
from  her  post  of  agony.  She  laid  a 
hand  on  the  projection  of  the  door  and 
tottered  a  little  way ;  from  that  to  a  chair, 
which  she  clutched,  and  just  as  Elizabeth 
Haynes  turned  the  door  handle  she  sank 


SING LEHE ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


73 


down  by  the  bed,  and  seizing  the  clothes 
convulsively,  she  sank  on  her  knees,  with 
her  arms  helpless  before  her,  as  the  door 
opened  and  Mrs.  Haynes  peeped  in.  Then 
that  lady  thought  she  was  praying,  and 
postponed  her  examination  until  the  morn- 
ing. 

She  was  not  so  far  wrong;  for  the  first 
thing  the  betrayed  wife  did,  when  she  had 
power,  was  to  pray  over  her  fatherless 
child.  She  prayed  to  God  for  hours,  and 
I  think  He  heard  her.  It  did  not  appear 
so  at  first.  In  that  horrible  night  she  lived 
a  life  of  agony.  She  thought  of  all  she 
had  done  and  suffered  for  that  man,  and 
she  was  the  milch  cow,  and  on  the  other 
side  that  door  was  the  wife. 

Three  thousand  miles  from  home — a  de- 
serted wife.  If  ever  a  woman  lived  a  year 
of  torture  in  a  night,  she  did.  It  exhausted 
her  body  so  that  she  actually  fell  asleep  for 
half  an  hour. 

She  dreamed  the  events  of  years;  but  at 
last  her  ever-changing  dream  culminated 
in  a  vision.  She  saw  before  her  her  own 
little  parlor.  In  it  sat  Deborah  and  Pinder 
looking  at  a  picture.  The  picture  had  no 
features  to  her,  but  Deborah's  face  and 
Pinder's  were  quite  clear,  and  beautiful 
with  affection.  Thej-  said  it  was  her 
picture,  as  beautiful  as  herself,  and  they 
feared  they  should  never  see  her  again. 
She  dreamed  she  wanted  to  comfort  them, 
and  say,  "You  shall — 3-011  shall,"  but  her 
tongue  was  tied.  The  two  faces  then  lie- 
came  angelic  with  affection,  and  vanished. 

She  awoke.  She  came  back  by  degrees 
to  her  own  misery.  But  how  is  this? 
The  anguish  that  was  so  keen  remains, 
but  no  longer  pierces,  stuns,  galls,  and 
maddens.  It  is  blunted,  and  her  heart 
seems  turned  to  stone. 

"Villain — drunkard — thief  and  traitor!" 
said  she  to  herself.  "  All  this  time  every- 
body knew  him  but  me.  I've  shed  my  last 
tear  for  him.  I've  turned  against  him. 
I'm  a  stone." 

She  turned  up  the  gas  and  looked  at 
Lucy.  This  moment  she  became  con- 
scious, then,  that  Lucy  had  no  longer  a 
rival  in  her  heart. 

She  resolved  to  leave  the  place  at  once. 


Suddenly  she  remembered  the  money 
Doubleface  got  out  of  her  to  make  Lucy's 
fortune,  as  he  said.  She  stooped  over 
Lucy  and  kissed  her,  too  softly  to  wake 
her.  "No,  my  fatherless  girl,"  said  she, 
"money  is  nothing  to  me  now,  but  they 
shan't  rob  you.  You  shall  have  your 
own,  if  they  kill  me." 

She  sat  down  quietly,  and  thought  what 
was  the  best  way  to  execute  the  design  she 
had  conceived  in  a  moment;  and  not  every 
one  of  us  would  have  hit  upon  the  right 
order  of  action  so  well.  She  began  by 
doing  in  her  own  room  all  that  could  be 
done  there  at  all.  She  put  a  small  table 
near  the  gas-light,  laid  her  scissors  on  it, 
threaded  a  needle,  and  fastened  it  to  her 
sleeve. 

Then  she  went  very  softly,  opened  one 
of  the  folding-doors,  and  satisfied  herself 
that  Doubleface  and  his  other  wife  were 
asleep.  Then  she  slipped  into  their  room 
and  turned  up  their  gas  a  very  little,  found 
his  trousers,  and  his  waistcoat  under  them, 
took  away  the  waistcoat  to  her  own  room, 
and  left  the  door  ajar. 

She  brought  the  waistcoat  to  her  table, 
cut  the  stitches,  drew  them  away,  took 
out  the  bank-notes,  and  put  them  in  her 
bosom,  all  as  coolly  as  possible. 

Then  she  sat  quietly  down  and  sewed 
up  the  top  of  the  pocket  again,  imitating 
the  very  number  of  the  stitches  she  had 
originally  put  in. 

Then  she  took  the  waistcoat,  went  into 
the  next  room,  and  put  it  back  on  the  chair 
exactly  where  she  had  found  it,  and  laid 
the  trousers  on  it. 

Then,  having  resumed  her  own,  and  no 
longer  caring  so  very  much  whether  she ' 
was  caught  or  not  by  a  man  whom  she 
could  send  to  prison  for  bigamy,  she  act- 
ually drew  the  curtain  back  a  little,  and 
folding  her  arms,  surveyed  the  couple 
steadily  with  such  an  expression  as  sel- 
dom looks  out  of  mortal  eye.  The  bus. 
band  lay  on  his  back  snoring  loud,  as  he 
always  did  after  excess.  The  other  woman 
he  had  deceived  lay  on  her  side  as  innocent 
as  a  child,  and  sleeping  like  one. 

The  resolute  woman  who  looked  on  stood 
there  to  be  cured  or  die.     Her  flesh  crawled 


74 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


and  quivered  at  first,  but  she  stood  and 
clinched  her  teeth,  and  deliberately  burned 
this  sight  into  her  heart,  that  she  might 
never  forget  it,  nor,  by  forgetting,  be  in- 
duced to  forgive  it. 

Soon  the  day  dawned,  and  a  servant  un- 
bolted the  street  door. 

Then  Sarah  made  Lucy  get  up  in  silence, 
both  put  on  their  bonnets,  and  she  took  the 
little  girl  through  the  other  room,  keeping 
her  on  her  other  side,  so  that  she  could  see 
nothing,  and  walked  out  of  the  house  with- 
out a  word. 

Late  in  the  morning  James  Mansell 
awoke  from  a  heavy  sleep,  and  found 
himself  alone  in  bed.  He  soon  realized 
the  situation  drink  had  blunted  overnight, 
and  it  frightened  him.  His  thoughts  were 
bitter.  How  drink  had  foiled  all  his  cun- 
ning! 

He  had  settled  in  his  sober  mind  to  play 
both  women  with  consummate  skill;  not 
to  go  near  Elizabeth  in  New  York  till  he 
had  settled  Sarah  in  Boston,  and  stayed 
with  her  a  month  at  least.  What  was  to 
be  done  now?  Why,  snatch  a  mouthful, 
and  then  hunt  after  Sarah  and  tell  her 
some  lie,  and  fly  with  her  to 
write  Elizabeth  another  lie  to  account  for 
his  departure. 

He  burst  through  the  folding-doors,  and 
threw  them  both  wide  open  for  air.  In 
the  room  his  haggard  face  looked  into  sat 
Elizabeth,  smiling  and  making  his  tea, 
and  getting  breakfast  ready  for  him;  her 
quick  ear  had  heard  him  move  in  the  bed- 
room. 

"That's  right,"  said  he;  "give  me  a 
morsel  to  eat.  I  must  be  off  to  the  docks 
directly  for  my  luggage." 

"  What,  is  your  money  and  all  at  the 
docks?" 

"Not  likely.  That  never  leaves  me 
night  and  day." 

"La!  then  you  might  show  it  to  me," 
said  she. 

"Perhaps  you  don't  believe  I  have  got 
it?"  said  he. 

"The  idea!  Of  course  I  believe  your 
word."  She  filled  him  a  cup  of  tea,  and 
said  no  more.  It  was  he  who  returned  to 
the  subject. 


"Come,  now,  you'd  like  to  see  it,  and 
make  sure?" 

"Why,  Matthew,"  said  she,  "what  wo- 
man wouldn't  that  had  heard  so  much 
about  it?" 

"  Here  goes,  then,"  said  he,  and  took  off 
his  coat. 

"  What,  in  your  coat?"  said  she.  "  Oh 
dear !  That  is  not  a  very  safe  place,  I  am 
sure." 

"  Guess  again,"  said  he.  Then  he  opened 
his  waistcoat,  and  showed  her  the  inside 

pocket. 

She  peered  across  the  table  at  it,  and 
approved. 

"I  see,"  said  she.  "Who'd  have  thought 
a  man  had  so  much  sense?"  On  reflection, 
however,  she  was  not  so  pleased.  "Who 
sewed  it  in  foryou?"  said  she  sharply.  "I 
can  see  the  stitches  from  here.  'Twas  a 
woman." 

"  Well,  then,  let  a  woman  unsew  it," 
was  all  the  reply  he  deigned;  and  he 
chucked  her  the  waistcoat,  and  went  on 
witli  his  breakfast  very  fast. 

She  t<>f>k  the  waistcoat  on  her  knee, 
whipped  her  scissors  out  of  her  pocket, 
and  carefully  snipped  the  stitches — then 
opened  the  pocket,  and  groped  in  it  witli 
her  fingers.  "  Well,  hut, "said  she,  "there's 
no  money  here." 

"Gammon,"  said  he,  with  his  mouth 
full. 

She  groped  it  thoroughly.  "  But  I  say 
there  isn't,"  said  she. 

"  Don't  tell  lies.     Give  it  me." 

She  gave  it  him,  and  watched  him 
keenly,  and  even  suspiciously. 

He  felt  the  pocket — groped  it — clutched 
it — turned  it  inside  out:  there  was  nothing. 

"What  in  Heaven  is  this?"  he  gasped. 
"Am  I  mad?  Am  I  dreaming?  It  is  im- 
possible. Cut  the  thing  to  pieces !  Tear 
it  to  atoms!  Robbed  !  robbed  !  I'll  go  for 
the  police!  I'll  search  ever}'  woman  in 
the  house !"     And  he  started  wildly  up. 

But  Elizabeth  rose  too,  and  said,  very 
firmly,  "  You'll  do  nothing  of  the  kind ; 
there  are  no  thieves  here.  Now  sit  down 
and  think." 

"  I  can't;  I'm  all  in  a  whirl." 

"  You  must.     Tell  me  the  name  of  all 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


75 


the  bars  you  drank  at  before  you  came 
here." 

He  groaned,  and  mentioned  several. 

"  Were  there  any  women  about?" 

"Plenty  at  some  of  them." 

"  Did  3*ou  take  your  coat  off?" 

"Not  likely.  I  tell  you  I  felt  them  in 
my  pocket  before  I  went  to  bed." 

"  Ah !  you  thought  so,  perhaps.  Now 
who  sewed  them  in  for  you?" 

"  No  matter." 

"  Who  sewed  them  in  for  you?" 

"  The  tailor." 

"  No,  Matthew,  a  woman  sewed  them 
in;  and  a  woman  sewed  the  empty  pocket 
up  again  this  last  time.  It  is  not  a  man's 
work ;  and,  besides,  men  are  not  so  artful 
as  all  that.  There's  more  behind  than  you 
have  told  me,"  and  she  fell  into  a  brown- 
study. 

Doubleface  took  his  resolution  in  a  mo- 
ment. He  would  go  to  the  docks,  wait 
there  till  Sarah  came  for  her  boxes,  and 
tell  her  he  had  been  set  upon  and  robbed. 
Then  he  would  go  away  with  her  and  work 
for  a  month,  till  she  got  more  money  from 
England. 

So  he  told  Elizabeth  he  would  take  the 
police  to  all  those  bars,  and  he  went  out 
hastily. 

She  made  no  objection ;  she  sat  there, 
and  brooded  over  this  strange  mystery. 

By-and-by  she  had  a  visitor — an  unex- 
pected one,  and  one  she  could  speak  her 
mind  to  on  this  subject  more  openly  than 
to  her  husband. 

Sarah  Mansell,  on  leaving  that  house, 
asked  her  way  to  the  Custom  House.  To 
her  surprise  it  was  very  near.  All  her  de- 
sire now  was  to  get  home.  Her  heart,  al- 
ways single,  turned  homeward  entirely. 
Jealousy  had  tortured  her  too  much.  The 
torture  that  kills  defeats  itself,  and  her  an- 
guish had  killed  love  as  well  as  agonized 
it.  And  then  she  had  her  own  special 
character;  for  women  vary  as  men  do:  in 
some,  jealousy  preponderates  so  that  they 
cannot  resign  an  unworthy  man  who  be- 
longs to  them  to  another  woman ;  in  others, 
jealousy, though  terribly  powerful,  is  curbed 
by  pride  and  self-respect.     These  are  the 


high-spirited  women  who  will  be  the  only 
one  or  none;  and  note  this,  the  more  they 
love  a  man,  the  more  they  will  have  him 
all  to  themselves,  or  part  with  him  root 
and  branch :  wild  horses  could  not  tear 
them  from  that  alternative.  These  loving 
but  resolute  women  belong  to  no  class  in 
society,  and  are  found  in  every  class. 
Books,  journals,  education,  ignorance, 
neither  make  nor  mar  them.  It  is  a 
law  of  their  nature,  though  not  the  gen- 
eral law. 

Sarah  found  that  a  steamboat  started  for 
England  that  day.  She  instantly  took  a 
berth  for  Lucy  and  herself,  and  meantime 
took  her  boxes  away  in  a  cab,  lest  James 
Mansell  should  come  and  find  them  there, 
and  wait  about  for  her.  She  did  not  fear 
him  one  bit;  but  she  abhorred  the  sight  of 
him  now. 

She  directed  a  carman  to  drive  her  to 
any  good  hotel  he  chose,  only  let  it  be  a 
mile  distant. 

James  Mansell  came  to  the  Custon 
House,  inquired  for  ber  boxes,  and  found 
that  his  wife  had  removed  them  and  gone 
to  a  hotel.  The  carman  who  took  her  had 
not  returned,  but  a  person  James  feed 
promised  to  ask  him  on  his  return  to 
what  hotel  he  bad  driven  the  lady.  Then 
Mansell  went  back  to  get  some  money  from 
Elizabeth,  for  he  had  drunk  all  his  loose 
cash  the  day  before. 

The  visitor  she  received  meantime  was 
Solomon  Grace.  He  came  in  rather  sheep- 
ishly, and  began  to  plead  her  permission, 
but  she  cut  all  that  short  very  bruskly. 

"  You  come  at  the  right  time.  I  have 
been  robbed  of  £400." 

Then  she  told  him  all  that  had  passed 
between  her  and  Matthew,  and  Solomon 
offered  his  theory,  videlicet,  that  the  notes 
had  never  existed. 

"Well,  then,  I  think  tbey  did,"  said 
Elizabeth.  "But  here's  my  trouble. 
There's  a  person  I  suspect;  but  I  don't 
like  to  tell  him;  he  might  blame  me  for 
housing  a  stranger,  and  indeed  it  was  a 
foolish  thing  of  me — there!  I  gave  a 
night's  lodging  to  an  English  woman 
and  her  child.     She   said   she   had   come 


76 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


by  the  boat,  and  lost  her  husband.  I  am 
afraid  she  never  had  one.  Anyway,  she 
slept  here  in  this  very  room,  and,  Solomon, 
while  my  man  was  telling  me  in  there  he 
had  got  me  the  £400,  she  came  bounce 
against  that  door,  and  I  thought  at  the 
time  she  was  listening.'" 

"  She  is  the  one  that  did  the  trick,"  was 
Solomon's  conclusion. 

However,  to  make  sure,  he  asked  if  Mr. 
Haynes  had  told  her  where  the  notes  were 
while  the  woman  was  listening. 

"He  must  have,"  said  Elizabeth.  Then 
she  thought  a  bit.  "  Why,  la  !  no  he  didn't. 
She  could  hear  no  more  than  I  did,  and 
certainly  I  didn't  know,  nor  he  didn't 
tell  me  until  this  morning,  breakfast  lime. 
There — she  couldn't  know  unless  she  had 
sewn  them  in,  and  that's  against  all  i 
It's  a  mystery;  it  is  quite  beyond  me." 

Solomon  puzzled  over  it  in  turn.  lie 
said  there  was  a  good-looking  woman  Eat 
waiting  for  her  husband  besl  pari  of  two 
hours  at  the  Custom  House,  and  a  child 
witli  her. 

"A  girl?" 

"  fes,  a  girl." 

"  What  had  she  on?" 

"  Didn't  observe." 

"What  was  the  child  like?" 

"Darkish — beautiful  black  eyes — a  pict- 
ure!" 

"That  is  them,  I  shouldn't  wonder.  You 
saw  no  husband,  I'll  go  bail." 

"Ay,  but  I  did — saw  his  back,  however. 
That  one  is  no  thief — a  plain,  honest  wo- 
man, with  a  face  something  between  a  calf 
and  an  angel." 

"Indeed,"  said  Elizabeth,  "she  looked 
honest;  and  if  her  tale  was  true,  it  seems 
hard  to  suspect  her.     But  it  is  a  puzzle." 

Then  Solomon  Grace  summed  up  the 
evidence:  "  He  drinks  and  gambles.  One 
of  those  ways  is  enough.  Such  a  man  is 
soon  eased  of  £400  in  New  York  City.  I've 
seen  a  many  drained  out  here  with  dice 
and  drink,  but  I  never  knew  a  fool's  pocket 
picked  of  notes  sewn  into  the  lining.  Puz- 
zle or  not,  that's  a  lie,  I  swan." 

The  latter  part  of  this  summing  up  was 
heard  by  Mr.  Mansell  from  the  parlor,  he 
having  slipped    into  the  house   the  back 


way.  He  came  in  lowering,  and  put  in 
his  word.  "  Did  you  ever  know  an  honest 
man  slip  into  a  house  and  backbite  a  man 
to  his  wife?" 

Solomon  turned  red  with  ire  and  shame, 
for  his  position  was  not  a  perfect  one. 
"  Can't  say  ever  I  did,  but  I've  known 
folk  the  truth  was  pison  to  wherever 
told." 

"  And  the  truth  is  that  you  are  a  dis- 
carded lover  of  in)-  wife's,  and  a  mischief- 
making  hypocrite." 

Elizabeth  was  alarmed,  for  she  knew 
Solomon  could  wring  this  bantam's  neck 
in  a  moment,  and  she  had  no  blind  con- 
fidence in  his  pacific  disposition,  though 
he  vaunted  it  so  highly.  "La!  Matthew, 
do  you  want  every  bone  in  your  skin 
broken?  And,  Solomon,  you  must  ex- 
cuse him  for  my  sake;  he  is  in  great 
trouble.      1   won't  detain  you  at  present." 

"That  means  make  tracks,"  said  poor 
Solomon.  "I'm  pacific,"  said  he,  almost 
crying  with  vexation.  "I'll  go,  sartain. 
I'd  better  go.     But,   Britisher — " 

"  Well,  what  is  it,  old  Ohio?" 

"  A  word  at  parting." 

"  In  Ohieageese?" 

"Every  dog  has  his  day.  That's  En- 
glish. 1  rather  think." 

When  he  was  gone,  Elizabeth  took  a 
cheerful  tone.  She  told  James  she  did 
not  tor  one  moment  believe  he  had  drunk 
or  gambled  away  £400.  "  But,"  said  she, 
"'  ii  is  no  use  being  angry  with  Solomon 
for  saying  what  all  the  world  says." 
Then  after  a  little  while  she  played  the 
philosopher.  "  If  \7ou  gave  me  my  choice, 
and  said,  'Will  you  have  £-400  or  a  sober, 
industrious  husband?'  do  you  think  I'd 
choose  the  money?  Never.  So  don't  let 
us  cry  over  spilled  milk,  but  just  }-ou  drop 
gambling — you  don't  drink  as  you  used — 
and  we  shall  do  first-rate.  The  house  is 
full  and  all  the  lodgers  like  me.  It  al- 
ways will  be  full  now.  Starting  was  the 
only  trouhle.  I  will  undertake  to  keep  you 
if  you  will  only  spend  your  evenings  with 
me.  " 

James  Mansell  pretended  to  jump  at  these 
terms,  and  Elizabeth  invited  him  to  go  out 
walking  with  her  in  an  hour's  time. 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


77 


He  agreed  with  feigned  alacrity,  and  she 
dressed  for  the  occasion,  and  they  walked 
out  arm  in  arm,  she  gay  as  a  lark,  he  moody 
and  distracted,  and  attending  to  her  flow 
of  talk  only  by  fits  and  starts. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Mansell  and  Lucy  had 
a  nice  wash  and  a  good  breakfast,  and  by- 
and-by  a  conveyance  was  at  the  door  to 
take  their  boxes  to  the  boat. 

But  Lucy  was  most  unwilling.  "Oh, 
mamma,"  she  said,  "we  have  only  just 
come." 

"I  can't  help  that,"  was  the  dogged 
reply. 

"  But  everything  is  so  beautiful,  and  the 
people  so  kind :  they  call  me  miss!" 

"My  child,"  said  her  mother,  "I  must 
go  home.  Wounded  creatures  all  go  home ; 
and  I  am  wounded  to  the  heart.  I  have 
nobody  now  but  you  :  be  kind  to  me." 

Lucy  flung  her  arms  round  her  mother's 
neck.  "  Oh,  mamma,  I'll  go  with  you  to 
Jericho." 


CHAPTER  X. 

It  seemed  as  if  everything  was  to  be 
smoothed  for  their  going  home.  At  the 
docks  they  found  Solomon  Grace  superin- 
tending Custom  House  work,  and  Sarah 
beckoned  him,  and  asked  him  how  she 
should  get  her  boxes  on  board. 

"  Going  home  already !  What,  without 
your  husband?" 

"Sir,  my  husband  has  abandoned  me." 

"What,  altogether?" 

"Me  and  my  child." 

"The  miserable  cuss." 

Having  thus  delivered  himself,  he  said 
it  was  his  business  to  obe}7  her  orders.  He 
couldn't  leave  that  spot  just  then,  but  if 
she  would  give  him  the  ticket,  his  mate 
should  stow  her  things  in  the  cabin. 
This  was  done  accordingly.  Meantime 
he  asked  leave  to  put  her  a  question. 


"As  many  as  you  please,"  said  she, 
calmly. 

"  Where  did  you  sleep  last  night?" 

"  With  a  lady  who  called  herself  Mrs. 
Haynes." 

"At  One  Hundred  and  Fourth  Street?" 

"  I  don't  know,  unfortunately.  But 
since  you  ask,  perhaps  you  know  that 
Mrs.   Haynes. " 

"  I  rather  think  I  do." 

"  That  is  curious." 

"  Well,  no.  I've  known  her  nine  years. 
Why,  her  first  husband  was  a  cousin  of 
mine.  When  he  died  I  always  intended 
to  be  number  two;  only  I  didn't  like  to  ask 
her  in  the  churchyard ;  but  that  'ere  Brit- 
isher warn't  so  nice;  he  slipped  in  ahead 
of  me." 

Sarah  turned  her  brown  eye  full  on  him 
with  growing  interest.  "  I  understand  per- 
fect^-, "  said  she.  "  You  respected  her  most 
because  you  loved  her  best." 

Solomon  stared  at  her.  He  was  utterly 
amazed,  but  at  the  same  time  charmed, 
at  this  gentle  stranger  reading  him  so 
favorably  all  in  a  moment,  and  reading 
him  right.  He  asked  her  a  little  sheep- 
ishly if  he  might  make  so  free  as  to  take 
her  hand.  "You  are  very  welcome,  I  am 
sure,"  said  she,  smiling  calmly. 

"  I'll  tell  you  the  truth,"  said  he,  "  though 
it's  agin  myself.  I  love  her  still;  can't 
get  her  out  of  my  head  nohow." 

"Why  should  you?"  said  she,  loftily. 

Solomon  stared  at  that. 

"  It's  like  poor  Joe  Pinder,"  said  she,  half 
to  herself. 

"Can't  say;  don't  know  the  family." 

Sarah  began  to  wonder.  Presently  she 
scanned  him  all  over  with  her  steady  eyes. 

"I  think,"  said  she,  slowly,  "it  must  be 
my  duty  to  write  a  note  to  Mrs.  Haynes." 

"  About  her  housing  you  for  the  night?" 

"About  that  and  other  things.  You 
know  her  and  respect  her;  will  you  give 
it  her?" 

"Of  course  I  will." 

"  Into  her  own  hand?" 

"And  glad  of  the  job." 

"Not  into  the  hands  of  the  man." 

"  What!  her  husband — the  cuss — not 
likely." 


78 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


Satisfied  on  that  point,  Sarah  said  she 
would  like  to  go  on  board  out  of  the  bustle. 
She  could  write  the  letter  in  the  cabin;  it 
would  be  a  short  one.  Then  Solomon  took 
her  and  Lucy  on  board.  After  some  little 
preparation  Sarah  took  paper  and  an  en- 
velope out  of  ber  bag:  she  had  everything 
ready  to  write  to  her  sister.  She  sat  down 
and  wrote  to  the  other  wife  of  James  Man- 
sell.  Solomon  Grace  had  nothing  else  to 
do  but  to  watch  her,  and  he  did  wonder 
what  that  thoughtful  brow  and  white  hand 
were  sending  to  the  woman  he  still  loved. 

It  was  no  simple  matter;  the  English- 
woman had  a  difficult  task  before  her. 
She  paused  at  every  line.  Her  face  was 
solemn,  grave,  and  powerful.  So  the  puz- 
zle deepened.  Solomon  could  see  this  was 
not  a  woman  writing  merely  to  thank  an- 
other for  a  night's  lodging.  Winn  she 
had  finished  it  she  folded  it  and  secured 
it  very  carefully,  and  beckoned  Solomon 
Grace. 

He  came  to  her. 

"You  will  give  this  letter  into  her  own 
hand,  and  sec  her  read  it ';" 

"I  will;  who  shall  1  say  it  is  from?" 

"Sarah  Mansell." 

"Oh!  Sarah  Mansell.  You  are  Sarah 
Mansell'/" 

"lam  Sarah  Mansell."  Then  she  said 
very  thoughtfully,  "This  Mrs.  Haynes, 
have  you  a  real  affection  for  her?" 

"  I  am  a  bachelor  for  her  sake,  that  is 
all."  said  he  despondently. 

She  fixed  her  eyes  on  him.  "Perhaps 
some  day  you  may  be  a  married  man  for 
her  sake." 

Solomon  shook  his  head.  "  Is  that  a 
conundrum?" 

"  Well,"  said  she,  "  the  future  is  a  riddle. 
What  I  am  doing  now  proves  that.  Who 
knows?  you  have  been  very  kind  to  me. 
Blessings  come  to  those  who  are  good  to 
the  stranger,  the  fatherless,  and  the  widow. 
Well,  my  child  is  fatherless  this  day,  and 
I  am  a  deserted  wife,  all  alone  on  the  great 
sea,  with  nobody  but  my  child  and  my 
God." 

Poor  Solomon  might  have  told  her  those 
two  were  more  than  seventy-seven  bad 
husbands,  but  she  went  too  straight  for 


the  tender  heart  that  lay  beneath  his 
breast. 

"Don't  ye  now,  don't  ye,"  he  sniveled; 
"you  make  me  cry  enough  to 'wash  a 
palace-car.  You're  not  alone,  you  shan't 
be  alone.  Here,  little  beauty,  come  and 
comfort  mother.  Solomon  Grace  isn't 
much,  but  he'll  stand  by  you  till  she 
starts,  and  then  you  must  just  keep  your 
eye  square  for  home,  like  the  jade's  figure- 
head there.  You  have  got  friends  to  homi  >?" 

"  1  have." 

"You  are  loved  to  home?" 

"I  am,  sir." 

"Don't  I  tell  you?  They  are  waiting 
for  you;  they  are  thinking  of  you." 

"  They  are.  I  saw  them  in  a  vision  last 
night." 

"  It  stands  to  reason;  you  was  born  to 
be  loved." 

"  1  thought  so  once,  sir." 

•'  1  think  so  now,  and  I'm  sure  of  it. 
You'd  bewitch  creation.  Why,  I'd  cut 
myself  in  pieces  to  serve  you.  Darn  mo 
if  I  wouldn't  take  you  safe  to  thai  ar 
island  and  hand  you  to  your  friends,  and 
then  slip  back,  if  it  warn't  for  the  letter." 

Leaving  this  good  soul  to  comfort  Sarah 
Mansell  till  the  ship  was  cleared  of  stran- 
gers, I  must  go  to  meet  a  less  interesting 
couple,  who  are  coming  this  way. 

As  James  took  the  walk  merely  to  pleaso 
Elizabeth,  he  went  wherever  she  chose. 
Thej  ailed  at  a  provision  shop  and  bought 
the  things  he  liked.  Elizabeth  was  hand- 
some, and  well  dressed,  and  many  admir- 
ing glances  were  cast  on  her.  Her  com- 
panion's vanity  was  tickled  at  this.  Only 
what  rather  spoiled  the  walk  was  that  he 
longed  so  at  that  very  moment  to  be  rak- 
ing the  town  for  the  other. 

Presently  they  came  out  in  sight  of  the 
quay,  and  James  began  to  fidget  again.  He 
burned  to  get  away  from  his  companion 
to  see  if  his  agent  had  news  of  Sarah,  and, 
besides  that,  he  had  a  dread  of  open  spaces. 
The}- facilitate  surprises.  Sarah  mi 
him  from  a  distance  walking  with  Eliza- 
beth. This  extreme  uneasiness  did  not 
escape  the  latter.  "  Why,  what  is  the 
matter  with  you  now?"  said  she.     "You 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


79 


keep  looking  about  as  if  you  had  done 
something,  and  expected  the  police  to 
pounce  on  you  from  every  corner." 

"  You  wouldn't  be  easy  if  you  had  lost 
£400  and  couldn't  tell  how." 

"Yes,  I  would,  if  I  could  do  without 
them.  They  were  for  me,  but  I  don't  fret, 
and  why  waste  another  thought  on  them, 
my  dear?" 

At  this  moment  the  steamer's  bell  rang. 
"There now, "said  Elizabeth  kindly,  "stay 
and  see  the  boat  start." 

"Lend  me  a  couple  of  dollars,"  said  he. 
She  gave  it  him  directly.  "  Wait  a  bit  for 
me  here,"  he  said,  and  Elizabeth  seated 
herself  in  a  sort  of  pleasant  waiting-room 
near  the  main  entrance  to  the  piers,  and 
waited. 

He  darted  into  a  shop  and  replenished 
his  flask.  Then  he  ran  to  find  his  agent, 
and  got  from  him  the  name  of  the  hotel 
Sarah  Mansell  had  gone  to.  He  was  eager 
to  go  there  at  once,  but  dared  not.  Eliza- 
beth had  a  temper.  Doubleface  was  fairly 
puzzled  between  the  two.  However,  it  was 
only  postponed  for  an  hour.  Elizabeth, 
with  her  house  full  of  lodgers,  would  not 
be  out  more  than  that,  and  then  he  would 
fly  on  the  wings  of  penitence  to  Sarah,  and 
not  leave  her  for  the  other  till  he  had  hum- 
bugged her  thoroughl}-  and  eradicated  all 
suspicion. 

So  he  came  back  to  Elizabeth.  She  was 
sitting  there  quite  at  ease.  "Curse  it," 
said  he,  "she  must  go  home." 

But  now  ropes  were  cast  off,  and  every 
preparation  made  for  the  vessel  leaving. 
This  is  admirably  managed  in  New  York. 
The  largest  steamboat  just  glides  away 
into  the  Atlantic  like  a  river  boat  start- 
ing upon  the  Thames. 

"Ah,"  said  Doubleface,  tormented  by 
the  situation  he  had  created  for  himself, 
"  I  wish  I  was  going  in  you — alone."  He 
stepped  forward  and  saw  her  move  away. 
She  lay  against  the  quay  amidships,  but 
she  was  so  long  that  it  took  a  minute  be- 
fore her  aftercabin  came  opposite. 

A  woman,  who  had  caught  sight  of 
James  Mansell,  but  hidden  herself  till 
then,  rushed  out  upon  the  poop,  followed 
by  a  girl.     She  whipped  a  packet  of  notes 


out  of  her  bosom,  and  brandished  them 
high  in  the  air  to  him,  then  drew  her 
child's  head  to  her  waist. 

That  is  what  she  did.  But  how  can 
words  convey  the  grandeur  of  those  im- 
passioned gestures,  the  swiftness  of  their 
sequence,  and  the  tale  that  towering  figure 
and  those  flaming  eyes  told  to  the  villain 
and  fool  who  had  possessed  her,  plagued 
her  for  years,  and  hit  upon  the  only  way 
to  lose  her. 

He  started  back,  bewildered,  blasted, 
terrified,  and  glared  after  her  in  stupid 
dismay. 

While  he  stood  petrified,  a  voice  hissed 
in  his  ear,  "  You  know- — where — your — 
notes — are — now !" 

It  was  Elizabeth  at  bis  shoulder,  but 
a  little  behind  him.  Doubleface  turned 
slowly,  aghast  with  this  new  danger.  He 
gasped,  but  could  not  articulate. 

Elizabeth  laid  her  right  hand  on  his 
shoulder,  and  pointed  to  Sarah  with  her 
left.  "  Why,  that  woman  is  shaking 
them  in  your  face!"  Then  she  took  him 
by  both  shoulders  and  turned  him  square 
to  her.  "  Your  face,  that  is  as  white  as 
ashes ! "  In  this  position  she  drove  her 
eyes  into  his,  and  clutched  him  firmly. 
"  What  is  there  between  that  woman  and 
you?  She  has  taken  your  money,  yet  she 
is  not  afraid.  She  vaunts  it,  and  it's  you 
that  tremble.     Oh!  what  does  this  mean?" 

In  her  excitement  she  had  grasped  him 
so  firmly  that  her  nails  hurt  him  severely 
through  his  clothes,  but  now  that  clutch 
relaxed,  and  she  felt  weak. 

"What  does  this  mean?"    she  repeated. 

The  other  creature,  accustomed  to  lie, 
now  tried  to  escape,  hopeless  as  it  seemed. 
He  stammered:  "I  don't  know.  I  saw  a 
woman  shake  something  or  other  at  me — 
was  it  at  me?" 

"Who  else?" 

"  I  fancied  she  looked  past  me,  somehow. 
Where  were  you?" 

"Behind  you  at  the  door." 

"  Could  it  be  to  you?"  The  desperate 
wretch  hardly  knew  what  he  was  say- 
ing. To  his  surprise  this  bold  suggestion 
told. 

"Why,  of  course  it  might  be  to  me." 


80 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


He  seized  this  advantage  artfully. 
"More  likely  to  neither  of  us,"  said  he; 
"and  yet  I  don't  know;  since  I  came 
home  everything  that  happens  is  a  mys- 
tery." 

"  That  is  true,  and  I  suppose  I  shall  never 
know  the  meaning  of  it  all." 

"I'm  as  much  in  the  dark  as  you  are," 
said  he,  "and  you  can  believe  me  or  not, 
as  you  like."  Then  he  took  a  step  or  two 
away  to  show  her  he  was  disposed  to  quar- 
rel with  her.  That  answers  sometimes 
when  a  body  is  in  the  wrong. 

This  stroke  of  policy  left  room  for  a 
third  figure  to  step  in  between  them,  and 
that  position  was  promptly  taken  by  Solo- 
mon Grace. 

"Letter  from  Sarah  Mansell." 

Doubleface  tinned  with  a  yell,  and  made 
a  grab  at  the  letter.  Solomon,  who  was 
holding  it,  out  with  his  right  hand  toward 
Elizabeth,  stopped  the  rush  with  his  left. 
and  mocked  the  attempt.  "  No  yer  don't," 
said  the  stalwart  giant.  "I'm  under  Mrs. 
Sarah  Mansell's  orders  as  this  letter  is  not 
to  be  intercepted  by  any  darned  cuss  what- 
ever, but  guv  into  the  hands  of  Mrs. 
Haynes,  and  read  before  me  to  make 
sure. " 

Elizabeth  stared,  hut  hesitated  to  defy 
her  husband  before  Solomon  Grace.  "But 
I  don't  know  her,"  said  she,  looking  at  the 
letter  in  Solomon's  hand. 

"Yes  ye  do — it's  the  lady  that  slept  at 
your  house  last  night." 

Elizabeth  uttered  a  little  cry  ami  panted. 
She  almost  snatched  the  letter  now,  and 
said,   "Then  she  did   listen  at  the  door." 

"  Like  enough,"  said  James.  "  Then  of 
course  she'll  know  what  to  say  to  set  us 
all  by  the  ears." 

"Yes,  but,"  said  Elizabeth,  "she  knows 
more  than  you  ever  told  me  that  night. 
She  knew  where  to  find  those  notes — ay, 
those  that  hide  can  find.  My  fingers 
tremble;  open  it  for  me,    Solomon." 

He  opened  the  letter,  and  handed  it  to 
Elizabeth,  and  dared  James  Mansell  to 
interfere.  Elizabeth  read  the  letter  very 
slowly,  and  piecemeal — read  it  how  she 
could,  indeed;  for  her  turn  was  come  to 
have  her  bosom  pierced: 


"  'Madam — You  and  I  are  both  un- 
fortunate. You  are  betrayed,  and  I  am 
deceived.  If  I  tell  the  truth,  I  must  pain 
you ;  if  I  withhold  it,  he  will  deceive  you 
still.'  Oh,  what  is  coming?  said  poor 
Elizabeth.  'The  man  that  passes  for 
Matthew  Haynes'  "  —  she  stopped  and 
looked  at  him,  and  read  again — "  'passes 
for  Matthew  Haynes — is  James  Mansell — 
my  husband!'  "  (The  reader  held  out  her 
hand  piteously  to  Solomon  Grace ;  he  sup- 
ported her,  and  she  held  on  to  him,  and 
that  seemed  to  give  her  more  power  to 
rend  on.)  "  'We  were  married  at  St. 
Mary's  Church,  Glo'ster,  on  the  13th  of 
July,    1873.'" 

"  That's  a  lie!"  said  James. 

"It  does  not  lead  like  one,"  was  the 
dogged  reply. 

"  'In  fsis  he  robbed  me  of  mv  savings, 
and  went  to  Ann  liea.  Last  month  one 
Varney  from  Liverpool  told  him  I  had 
money.  He  came  for  it  directly,  and 
to,>k  me  with  it — it  was  £400  —  sooner 
than  not  have  it  at  all.  Dear  madam, 
I  could  not  let  my  child  ho  robbed.' 
There,  I  knew  it — she  took  back  her 
own.  '  But  James  Mansell  is  yours  if 
worth  keeping.'  Are  you  worth  keep- 
ing? 'My  door  he  m  vc  r  enters  again. 
But  if  ever  you  should  be  as  desolate  as 
I  was  on  your  steps  that  hitter  night,  my 
home  is  yours.      God  help  us  both  ! 

'• '  Sarah  Mansell, 

"  '13  Green  Street,  Liverpool.'" 

"That  is  as  clever  a  lie  as  ever  woman 
told,"  said  James  Mansell. 

Elizabeth  replied:  "It  is  God's  truth! 
Sunshine  is  not  clearer.  So,  then,  I  never 
had  but  one  husband."  She  put  both  hands 
to  her  face  and  blushed  to  the  throat.  "  You 
were  his  friend.  Take  me  home."  She 
clung  piteously  to  Solomon.  Then  she 
turned  to  Doubleface.  "  In  one  hour  my 
servant  will  give  you  your  clothes  on  my 
doorstep.    My  door  you  never  enter  again." 

"  Mind  that !"  said  the  Illinois  man.  "  I 
shall  be  there.  'Every  dog  has  his  day !'  " 
With  the  word  he  tucked  the  resolute  but 
trembling  Elizabeth  tight  under  his  arm . 
and  took  her  home. 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


81 


Doubleface  cursed  them  both  as  they 
retreated.  Then  he  rushed  to  the  water- 
side, and  the  steamboat  was  now  all  in 
sight,  and  Sarah  Mansell  still  visible, 
standing  over  her  child,  with  her  eyes 
raised  to  Heaven. 

Then  the  fool  and  villain  raged  and 
raved  between  the  two  superior  women 
he  had  deceived  and  lost.  Both  too  good 
for  him,  and  at  last  he  knew  it — both  in 
sight,  yet  leaving  him  forever,  and  he 
knew  it.  He  raved;  he  cursed;  he  ran 
to  the  water's  edge.  No,  he  had  not  the 
courage  to  die.  He  took  out  his  flask  and 
went  for  comfort  to  his  ruin — he  drank 
neat  brandy  fiercely. 

Then  fire  ran  through  his  veins.  He 
began  not  to  care  quite  so  much.  He 
drank  again.  Aha!  He  was  brave. 
He  defied  them.  He  drank  both  their 
healths  in  brandy.  He  vowed  to  have 
two  more  as  good  as  either  of  them.  He 
drank  on  till  his  eyes  set  and  he  rolled 
upon  the  pavement.  There  the  police 
found  him  dead  drunk,  and  held  a  short 
consultation  over  him. 

"Police  cell?" 

"No — hospital." 


CHAPTER  XL 

Joseph  Pinder  and  Deborah  Smart 
kept  the  home  and  the  little  shop,  and 
were  on  those  terms  of  gentle  fellowship 
which  often  lead  to  a  closer  union  when 
some  stronger  attachment  ceases  to  inter- 
fere. When  a  month  had  elapsed  they 
began  to  be  very  anxious  to  hear  from 
Sarah ;  and  one  evening  Pinder  said  if 
she  had  written  the  day  she  landed,  or 
even  the  day  after,  they  ought  to  have 
had  a  letter  that  very  day. 

"Oh!"  said  Deborah,  "he  won't  let  her 
write  to  us.  That  is  my  trouble  now — we 
shall  never  know  whether  she  is  dead  or 
alive." 


Pinder  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe 
that;  so  then  they  had  a  discussion.  It 
was  interrupted  by  the  rattle  of  a  fly 
drawing  up  at  the  door.  Wheel  visitors 
were  rare  at  that  house.  Deborah  thought 
the  man  had  drawn  up  at  the  wrong  door; 
Pinder  said  he  would  go  and  see;  a  knock 
at  the  door  settled  the  question.  Pinder 
opened  it,  and  there,  full  in  the  gaslight, 
stood  Sarah  Mansell  and  Lucy.  Pinder 
uttered  a  loud  exclamation.  She  gave  a 
little  sign  of  satisfaction  and  put  both 
hands  on  his  shoulders.  "Yes,  my  good 
Joseph,  here  we  are,  thank  Heaven !  Oh, 
sister!"  and  she  stopped  Deborah's  scream 
of  amazement  and  delight  by  flying  into 
her  arms.  The  cab  was  paid,  the  boxes 
taken  into  the  parlor,  and  then  Sarah  and 
Lucy  were  inspected  and  cuddled  again. 

Then  came  a  fusillade  of  questions.  "  But 
what  brought  you  back  so  soon?  Did  he 
change  his  mind?  I  never  thought  he 
would  let  you  come  back  at  all.  And 
looking  like  a  rose;  you  are  properly  sun- 
burned ;  but  it  becomes  you — everything 
becomes  my  sister.  Here's  your  picture; 
it  has  been  our  only  comfort.  Aren't  you 
hungry  after  your  journey?" 

"Indeed  I  am." 

"Bless  you!  And  I  could  almost  bless 
him  for  bringing  you  back  in  such  health 
and  spirits.  There,  you  go  upstairs  and 
make  yourselves  comfortable;  your  supper 
shall  be  ready  in  ten  minutes.  Oh  dear! 
I  don't  know  whether  I'm  on  my  head  or 
my  heels  for  joy." 

In  due  course  the  cloth  was  laid  for  five 
and  supper  served. 

"Will  he  be  here  to  supper?"  asked 
Deborah  with  a  laughable  diminution  of 
ardor. 

"No." 

"  That  is  odd.  Of  course  he  will  sleep 
here?" 

"No." 

At  this  Deborah  and  Pinder  sat  open- 
mouthed,  and  could  hardly  believe  their 
senses.  Sarah,  brimful  of  health  and  in 
good  spirits,  yet  her  husband  not  with 
her.  He  could  not  be  far  off,  thought 
Deborah. 

"  He  is  in  Liverpool?" 


82 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


"No." 

"  Then  he  is  coming  by  next  boat?" 

"No." 

"Well,  I  never." 

"Let  us  welcome  her,  not  question  her," 
suggested  Pinder;  "she  will  tell  us  all 
about  it  when  she  chooses.  It  is  enough 
for  me  to  see  her  looking  so  well  and  so 
happy." 

"  Happy — because  I  am  at  peace,  and 
because  I  have  got  back  to  two  dear 
friends.  Ah!  I  saw  you  both  in  my 
dream,  sitting  over .  that  picture  there 
ami  saying,  'We  shall  never  see  her 
again.'  " 

"Oh,  gracious  Heavens!  and  so  we  did,*' 
cried  Deborah. 

"I  was  sure  of  it,"  Sarah  replied,  "the 
vision  was  so  plain." 

Deborah's  curiosity  burned  her;  she 
could  not  help  putting  questions  directly 
or  indirectly.  Sarah  parried  them  calmly; 
then  came  a  practical  and  somewhat  deli- 
cate question.  Deborah  a] >proached  it  in- 
directly. 

"Since  \-ou  went  I  was  afraid  to  Ik1  alone 
in  the  house,  and  Mr.  Pinder  he  has  slept 
in  Lucy's  room." 

Sarah  saw  at  once  what  she  would  be 
at,  and  said,  "Pray  make  no  change  for 
me.  Lucy  will  sleep  with  me  in  the  best 
bedroom.  We  shall  both  prefer  it,  shall 
we  not?" 

"Oh.  yes,  mamma!  I  like  to  be  with 
you  day  and  night." 

Deborah  was  charmed  at  the  arrange- 
ment, and  so  was  Pinder;  he  had  ex- 
pected to  be  politely  consigned  to  some 
other  dwelling.  Deborah,  however,  must 
try  once  more  to  draw  her  sister. 

"This  is  a  blessed  state  of  things,"  said 
she,  "  but  I  am  afraid  'tis  too  good  to  last. 
He  will  drop  on  us  some  day,  and  turn  us 
to  the  right-about." 

Sarah  would  not  utter  a  syllable  in  reply, 
and  wore  an  impassive  countenance,  as  she 
took  no  interest  whatever  in  the  specula- 
tion. It  must  be  confessed  this  was  enough 
to  exasperate  curiosity.  "Well,"  said  Debo- 
rah, in  despair,  "will  you  answer  me  one 
thing?     Has  he  collared  the  money?" 

Sarah  put  her  hand  to  her  bosom  and 


produced  a  bundle  of  notes.  "  It  is  all 
here  except  the  traveling  expenses,"  she 
said,  calmly. 

"lam  glad  of  that,"  said  Pinder;  "and, 
for  pity's  sake,  don't  question  her  any 
more." 

Sarah  smiled.  "  Don't  be  hard  on  her, 
Joseph,"  said  she.  "She  must  ask  ques- 
tions, being  a  woman,  and  one  that  loves 
me.  But  I'm  not  bound  to  answer  them, 
you  know." 

"  If  she  won't  bear  to  be  questioned  she 
shall  go  to  bed,  for  I  am  dying  with  curios- 
ity. Aren't  you,  Mr.  Pinder?  Now  tell 
the  truth." 

"  W't  11,  I  am,"  was  the  frank  reply. 
"  But  I  don't  want  to  know  everything 
all  in  a  moment.  I'd  rather  have  her 
here  ami  know  nothing  more  than  know 
everything  and   not  have  her." 

Deborah  acquiesced  hypocritically,  be- 
cause she  had  just  remembered  she  could 
get  it  all  out  of  Lucy.  That  young  lady 
now  showed  fatigue,  and  the  little  party 
separated  for  the  night. 

"One  word,"  said  Deborah  to  Sarah  in 
her  bedroom.  "Give  me  one  word  to  sleep 
on.     Are  you  happy?" 

"  Sister,  I  am  content." 

Deborah  pumped  Lucy.  Lucy,  to  her 
infinite  surprise,  pursed  up  her  lips,  and 
would  not  say  a  word. 

Her  mother  bad  made  her  promise  most 
solemnly  not  to  reveal  anything  whatever 
that   bad  happened  to  them  in  New  York. 

Deborah  writhed  under  this,  but  Pinder 
made  light  of  it,  and  really  there  was 
plenty  to  balance  the  want  of  complete 
information.  Sarah  resumed  her  busi- 
ness;  he  was  once  more  her  associate, 
and  his  jealousy  was  set  to  sleep. 

Her  husband  was  not  there,  and  no 
longer  filled  her  thoughts.  She  never 
fretted  for  him;  indeed,  she  ignored  the 
man.  The  phenomenon  was  new  and  un- 
accountable, but  certain.  Joseph  Pinder 
threw  himself  with  more  ardor  than  ever 
into  her  service,  and  persuaded  her  to  seize 
an  opportunity,  and  rent  larger  and  better- 
situated  premises  in  a  good  thoroughfare. 
Here  their  trade  was  soon  quadrupled,  and 
Sarah  Mansell  was  literally  on  the  road  to 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


83 


fortune.  By-and-by  Lucy's  health  failed. 
It  was  "  Pinder  to  the  rescue"  directly.  He 
took  a  little  villa  and  garden  outside  the 
town,  and  there  he  established  Deborah 
and  Lucy  with  a  maid-servant.  Sarah 
slept  there.  Pinder  had  a  room  there, 
but  generally  slept   on    the  old   premises. 

All  this  time  he  was  making  visible  ad- 
vances in  the  affection  of  Sarah  Mansell. 
Indeed,  that  straightforward  woman  never 
condescended  to  conceal  her  growing  affec- 
tion for  him.  The  change  was  visible  on 
the  very  night  of  her  arrival ;  but  now,  as 
the  months  rolled  on,  her  innocent  affection 
and  tenderness  for  the  friend  who  had  suf- 
fered for  her,  and  loved  her  these  ten  years, 
grew  and  grew. 

Deborah  saw  it.  Lucy  saw  it.  The  last 
to  see  it  was  Joseph  himself;  but  even  he 
discovered  it  at  last  with  a  little  help  from 
Deborah.  In  truth,  it  was  undisguised. 
The  only  mystery  was  how  it  could  be 
reconciled  with  her  character,  for  she  was 
a  wife,  and  the  most  prudent  of  women. 
Then  why  let  Joseph  Pinder  see  he  was 
the  man  she  cared  for — and  the  only  one? 
However,  one  day  the  exultant  Joseph 
found  there  were  limits.  In  the  ardor 
of  his  affection  he  went  to  kiss  her.  She 
drew  back  directly.  "Please  don't  forget 
I  am  James  Mansell's  wife."  And  for  a 
day  or  two  after  that  her  manner  was 
guarded  and  reserved.  This  was  a  warn- 
ing to  Mr.  Joseph  Pinder.  A  full  and 
sweet  affection  visibly  offered,  but  passion 
declined  without  a  moment's  hesitation. 
Joseph  was  chilled  and  disappointed  for 
the  moment,  but  what  he  had  endured  for 
her  in  less  happy  times  reconciled  him  to 
the  limits  she  now  imposed.  The  situa- 
tion was  heavenly  compared  with  those 
that  had  preceded  it,  and  above  all  he 
saw  nobody  to  be  jealous  of.  He  had 
also  little  auxiliary  joys  in  the  affection 
of  Lucy  and  Deborah.  These  two,  as  well 
as  Sarah,  loved,  petted,  and  made  much 
of  him. 

How  long  this  placid  affection  and  sweet 
tranquil  content — the  most  enduring  happi- 
ness nature  permits,  if  man  could  but  see 
it — might  have  endured,  I  cannot  say,  for 
it  was  cut  short  about  ten  months  after 


Sarah's  return  by  a  revelation  that  let  in 
passion  and  let  out  peace. 

They  did  now  a  brisk  trade  with  the 
United  States;  and  one  evening  a  new 
agent  came  from  New  York  with  liberal 
offers.  This  man  happened  to  be  a  gossip 
and  a  friend  of  Solomon  Grace.  "Man- 
sell  !"  said  he  (the  name  over  the  shop).  "  I 
could  tell  j-ou  a  queer  story  connected  with 
that  name." 

"  It's  not  an  uncommon  name,"  said  Pin- 
der.    "  Was  it  James  Mansell?  " 

"No;  it  was  a  woman — a  Mrs.  Mansell. 
My  friend  Grace's  wife — 'that  is  now — 
found  her  seated  on  a  doorstep  with  a 
little  girl;  she  said  she  had  missed  her 
husband.  Mrs.  Grace  — at  least,  Mrs. 
Haynes  she  was  then— asked  her  in,  and 
liked  her  so  well  she  gave  her  her  supper 
and  a  bed.  Presently  home  comes  Mr. 
Haynes,  her  husband,  quite  unexpected. 
They  had  a  hug  or  two,  I  suppose,  and 
talked  of  their  family  affairs.  And  it 
seems  this  Mrs.  Mansell  listened,  for  next 
day  this  Haynes,  as  he  called  himself, 
missed  £400  sterling  that  was  sewed  in- 
side his  pocket.  There  was  a  row;  one 
said  one  thing,  one  said  another.  Then 
— let  me  see — what's  next?  Oh,  I  remem- 
ber! what  do  you  think?  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Haynes  were  watching  the  steamboat  start- 
ing for  England.  Doesn't  Mrs.  Mansell 
step  on  deck  all  of  a  sudden  and  shakes 
the  missing  bank  -  notes  in  both  their 
faces—" 

"  Capital !"  roared  Pinder.  "  Go  on !  go 
on !" 

"  And  it  turned  out  she  had  only  taken 
back  her  own,  for  this  Haynes  was  no 
Haynes  at  all,  but  one  Mansell,  if  you 
please,  and  had  been  taking  a  turn  at 
bigamy." 

"  The  scoundrel !     Now  I  see  it  all." 

"  However,  it  didn't  pay.  Both  the 
women  sacked  him,  and  Mrs.  Haynes's 
friends  wanted  to  imprison  him.  But 
Solomon  Grace  said,  'Don't  let's  have  a 
row.  Marry  me.'  Mind,  he  had  always 
been  sweet  on  her.  So  she  married  him 
like  a  bird.  Why,  you  seem  quite  flut- 
tered like.     Do  you  know  the  people?" 

"  I  do.     This  very  shop  belongs  to  that 


84 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


same  Mrs.  Man  sell.  Do  tell!  How  things 
come  about !" 

"  But  of  course  the  story  is  no  news  to 
you?"  said  the  agent. 

"  Yes  it  is.  She  never  mentions  his 
name." 

"No  wonder.  It  must  be  a  sore  sub- 
ject." 

"Where  is  the  villain?  What  has  be- 
come of  him?  Any  chance  of  his  coming 
over  here?" 

"How  can  I  tell?" 

You  may  imagine  the  effect  of  this  story 
upon  Pinder.  He  went  out  to  the  villa  hot 
with  it,  and  glowing  with  love  and  pity  for 
Sarah  and  rage  at  her  husband.  But  dur- 
ing the  walk  he  cooled  a  little,  and  began 
to  ask  himself  if  he  ought  to  go  and  blurt 
out  his  information. 

Sarah  must  have  some  reason  for  with- 
holding it  so  long.  Why,  of  course  she 
was  mortified,  and  would  not  thank  him 
if  ho  went  and  published  it.  Herein  he 
misunderstood  Sarah's  motive  —  it  was 
more  profound,  and  the  result  of  much 
thought  and  forecast.  However,  she  will 
speak  for  herself.  As  for  Binder,  he  took 
a  middle  course:  he  confided  it  to  Debo- 
rah, stipulating  thai  she  should  feel  her 
way  with  Sarah,  ami  see  how  she  could 
bear  the  truth  being  known. 

Deborah  acted  on  these  instructions. 
But  Sarah  broke  through  them  all  in  a 
moment,  and  told  her  the  whole  truth. 

Next  morning  after  breakfast  she  spoke 
privately  to  Pinder. 

"So  you  have  heard  something  about 
what  parted  James  Mansell  and  me  for- 
ever?" (She  had  divined  at  once  it  must 
have  come  through  Pinder.) 

"Yes,  Sarah,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  have." 

"  Well,  Deborah  will  tell  you  the  whole 
story.  It  is  not  a  matter  I  care  to  talk 
about. " 

••  I  would  rather  have  heard  it  from  you 
than  from  a  stranger.  Did  you  doubt 
whose  side  I  should  be  on?" 

"  No,  Joseph,  not  for  a  moment.  If  you 
must  know,  it  was  entirely  for  your  sake 
I  kept  it  to  myself. " 

"For  my  sake?  Why,  it  only  makes 
my  heart  warm  a  little  more  to  you.     To 


think  that  such  an  angel  as  you  should 
ever  be  deceived  and  pillaged!" 

"  And  cured.  Believe  it  or  not,  I  am 
thankful  it  happened,  and  almost  grateful 
to  the  man  for  undeceiving  me  before  I 
wasted  any  more  affection  on  such  a  creat- 
ure. No,  Joseph.  I  am  single-hearted, 
as  I  always  was,  and  my  heart  turned  to 
you  before  ever  j-ou  saw  my  face  this 
time,  and  I  kept  that  cruel  story  locked 
in  my  bosom  for  your  sake.  Ah,  well!  I 
was  not  to  have  mj*  way.  You  know  my 
condition  now — neither  maid,  wife,  nor 
widow — and  I  am  afraid  it  will  unsettle 
your  mind,  and  this  will  not  he  the  happy 
home  it  has  been." 

She  sighed  as  she  said  this.  He  smiled 
at  her  wild  apprehensions.  But  she  was 
wise,  and  one  that  knew  the  heart  of  a 
man,  and  had  forecasts. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

The  only  difference  it  made  at  first  was 
a  sli-ht  increase  of  sympathy  and  respect 
-a  the  part  of  Joseph  Pinder.  But  this 
wa-  followed  by  a  more  manifest  ardor  of 
devotion,  and  this  in  due  course  by  open 
courtship. 

Sarah  thought  it  due  to  herself  and  her 
position  to  curb  this.  She  did  so  with 
admirable  address — sometimes  playfully, 
sometimes  coldly,  sometimes  firmly,  al- 
ways kindly;  yet  with  all  this  tact  the 
repeated  cheeks  made  Pinder  cross  now 
and  then. 

She  was  sorry,  but  out  of  prudence  would 
not  show  it.  It  ended  in  his  begging  par- 
don, and  in  her  saying  she  did  not  blame 
him;  it  was  the  natural  consequence  of 
her  situation,  now  that  situation  was  de- 
clared. 

As  nothing  stands  still,  this  went  on  till 
the  very  thing  Sarah  had  foreseen  came  to 
pass.  The  man,  after  so  many  years  of 
self-restraint,    and   so  many  good   offices 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


85 


done,  found  himself  at  last  rewarded  with 
affection  only.  Tli at  was  so  sweet  that, 
instead  of  satisfying  him,  it  enticed  him 
on;  he  longed  to  possess  her,  and  asked 
himself  why  not.  It  was  no  longer  either 
wrong  or  impossible.  He  implored  her  to 
divorce  James  Mansell  and  marry  him. 
She  received  the  proposal  with  innocent 
horror.  "  For  shame !"  she  said — "'  oh,  for 
shame !"  and  turned  her  back  on  him,  and 
would  hardly  speak  to  him  for  some  hours. 

He  took  the  rebuff  humbly  enough  at 
the  time.  But  afterward  he  consulted  his 
friends,  and  they  sided  with  him,  and  he 
returned  to  the  charge.  He  pressed  her, 
he-  urged  her,  he  coaxed  her,  he  did  every- 
thing except  remind  her  of  his  own  merits 
(and  her  own  heart  supplied  that  omission), 
but  she  would  not  yield.  And  the  provok- 
ing thing  was,  she  would  not  argue.  Her 
old-fashioned  religion  and  her  old-fash- 
ioned delicacy  despised  reasoning  on  such 
a  matter.  He  might  almost  as  well  have 
offered  her  reasons  for  bigamy.  She  was 
prejudiced  and  deaf  to  logic.  The  next 
time  he  attacked  her  she  showed  distress. 
"  Ah,"  she  said,  "  I  foresaw  this.  Now  you 
know  why  I  kept  my  sad  story  to  myself. 
I  know  the  value  of  peace  and  pure  affec- 
tion, and  I  know  that  you  or  any  man 
would  demand  more  than  I  can  give.  I 
don't  blame  you,  dear;  but  you  will  not 
forgive  me;  it  is  not  likely."  Her  tears, 
the  first  he  had  ever  made  her  shed,  melted 
him.  He  kissed  her,  and  begged  her  to 
forgive  him.  She  sighed,  and  said,  "  I 
suppose  it  is  no  use  telling  you  what  it 
costs  me  to  deny  you.  You  will  never 
be  easy  now,  but  will  never  move  me.  I 
can't  help  it.     I  must  trust  in  God." 

Joseph  Pinder  told  his  friends  it  was  no 
use;  he  couldn't  move  her;  he  only  tor- 
mented himself  and  made  her  unhappy. 
Then  one  of  them  laughed  in  his  face, 
and  told  him  he  was  loving  the  woman 
like  a  calf  and  not  like  a  man.  "  If  she  is 
really  fond  of  you,  be  her  master.  She'll 
like  you  all  the  better,  whatever  she  may 
pretend.  You  cut  it  for  a  year  or  two, 
and  let  her  find  out  what  you  are  worth." 

Another  told  him  he  was  being  hum- 
bugged and  made  a  convenience  of.     The 


woman  was  secretly  hoping  her  husband 
would  come  back  and  eat  humble  pie.  So 
what  with  passion,  the  sense  of  long  serv- 
ice, instilled  distrust,  and  wounded  vanity, 
Joseph  Pinder,  after  disquieting  himself 
and  Sarah  in  vain  for  six  months,  re- 
solved to  make  a  change.  One  Saturday 
night  he  packed  up  his  carpet-bag,  and 
announced  that  he  should  go  next  morn- 
ing to  Manchester,  and  thence  to  London. 

"For  how  long?"  asked  Sarah  anxiously. 

"  Well,  Sarah,  for  good,  unless  some- 
thing happens." 

Sarah  said  nothing;  she  understood  in  a 
moment  that  he  intended  to  make  a  last 
attempt,  and  to  go  if  she  refused. 

Next  morning  she  went  to  church  just 
as  usual,  and  Joe  Pinder  awaited  her  re- 
turn— with  his  ultimatum. 

However,  his  feelings  were  subjected  to 
some  little  trials  before  she  came  home. 

It  was  a  glorious  day. 

Lucy  and  Deborah  sat  out  in  the  little 
garden.  He  finished  packing  his  bag, 
and  then  went  down  to  say  a  last  word 
to  them.  He  found  Deborah  with  red 
eyes,  and  silent  too — very  unusual  things 
with  her.  She  and  Lucy  had  evidently 
been  talking  the  matter  over,  for  Lucy 
asked  him  plump  why  her  mother  would 
not  marry  him.  He  replied,  sullenly,  "  Be- 
cause I  don't  deserve  it,  you  may  be 
sure." 

"That  is  a  fib,"  said  Lucy,  severely. 
"  Well,  if  she  won't,  you  had  better  marry 
me.     Anything  is  better  than  being  cross." 

"You  must  grow  up  first,"  suggested 
Deborah , 

"Or  I  must  grow  down,"  said  Pinder. 

Then  he  took  Lucy  on  his  knee,  and  be- 
ing in  no  humor  for  jest,  he  said,  "I  had 
set  my  heart  on  you  for  a  daughter.  A 
wife  I  might  find,  but  a  daughter  like  you, 
all  read}"  to  love  me- — a  regular  rose-bud! 
Ah,  well !" 

Lucy,  precocious  in  all  matters  of  senti- 
ment, gushed  cut  directly,  "You  shall,  you 
shall.  Why,  now  I  think  of  it,  I  want  a 
father.  I  never  much  liked  the  other  one. 
But  I  like  you,  Uncle  Joe — I  mean  Father 
Joe.  There,  I  love— I  adore  you."  She 
spread  her  arms  supernaturally  wide,  and 


86 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


threw  them  round  his  neck  with  an  en- 
thusiastic rush. 

"  Little  angel !"  said  the  affectionate  fel- 
low. "  Well,  Lucy,  I'll  try  for  you,  but  I 
suppose  it  is  no  use.  Yes,  Deborah,"  said 
he,  "  I'll  go  for  my  bag,  and  a  few  minutes 
will  decide." 

Deborah  could  not  blame  him,  for  she 
knew  that,  if  she'd  been  a  man,  she  could 
not  have  been  so  patient  as  Joe  Pinder  had 
been.  There  was  a  wicket-gate  at  the  back 
of  the  garden,  and  Sarah  now  appeared  at 
it.  She  had  risen  in  the  world.  Both  .-lie 
and  Deborah  were  dressed  in  rich  black  silk 
dresses,  but  with  no  trimming  or  flounces. 
Being  tall,  they  showed  off  the  materia] 
all  the  more.  Sarah  had  a  white  French 
bonnet  and  neat  gloves,  but,  relic  of  humil- 
ity, she  carried  her  prayer-book  in  her  hand. 

Deborah  sent  Lucy  indoors,  and  went  to 
meet  her  sister.  "Oh,  Sarah,"  she  said, 
all  in  a  hurry,  "do  mind  what  you're 
about.  Joe  Pinder's  blood  is  up.  I  think 
it  is  his  friends  that  jeer  him." 

Sarah  sighed.    "  What  can  1  do?" 

"  You  can't  do  nothing,  but  you  can  say 
a  deal.  Why.  what  is  a  woman's  tongue 
for?  Tellium  anything,  promise  anything. 
La,  1  wish  I  was  in  your  place — he  should 
never  leave  me!" 

Before  Sarah  could  answer.  Pinder  ap- 
peared at  the  door  with  a  large  carpet-bag. 
He  put  it  down  en  the  steps.  Deborah  ran 
to  him. 

"Oh,  Joseph,"  she  said,  pathetically, 
"what  should  we  do  without  thee?  And 
look  at  the  garden — not  a  flower  but  you 
planted;  ami  'twas  you  laid  the  turf.  Joe, 
dear,  don't  believe  but  she  loves  you  with 
all  her  heart.  She  never  could  love  two 
since  she  was  born,  and  you  are  the  one." 

"  That  remains  to  be  seen,"  said  the  man 
firmly ;  and  he  looked  so  pale  and  so  dogged 
Deborah  had  little  hope  he  would  give  in. 
He  came  to  Sarah;  she  was  seated  in  a 
garden  chair  waiting  bravely  for  him.  He 
stood  in  front  of  her.  "  I've  come  to  know 
your  mind,  once  for  all." 

"I  think  you  know  my  mind,"  she  said, 
gently,  "  and  I'm  sure  you  know  my  heart." 

"No,  Sarah,  I  don't,  not  to  the  bottom." 

"  Perhaps  not.  Women-folk  were  always 


hard  for  men  to  understand.  Never  heed 
that.  Speak  your  own  mind  to  me,  dear 
Joseph." 

And  Pinder  said  he  was  there  on  pur- 
pose. "But  first,"  said  he,  "let  me  put  a 
question  to  you.  I'm  almost  ashamed  to, 
though." 

"  It  is  no  time  to  be  afraid  or  ashamed," 
said  she,  solemnly.  "  Let  me  know  all  that 
is  in  your  heart — the  heart  that  I  am  los- 
ing." 

"  No,  no,"  said  Pinder,  "not  if  you  think 
it  worth  keeping.  Well,  Sarah,  what  I 
am  driven  to  ask  you  is,  What  can  any 
man  do  to  earn  a  woman  more  than  I  have 
done?  I  have  loved  you  honestly  these 
ten  years.  I  was  true  to  you  when  you 
didn't  belong  to  mo.  1  tried  to  serve  your 
husband  for  your  sake — a  chap  I  always 
disliked  and  despised.  You  found  him 
out  at  last,  and  parted  with  him.  Then 
I  hid  my  mind  no  longer." 

"It  never  was  hidden  from  me." 

"Since  you  came  back  alone  I  have 
courted  you  openly.  You  don't  forbid 
me.       You     almost     seem     to    return    my 

love." 

*'  Almost  seem!  I  love  you  with  all  my 
heart  and  soul.  I  never  loved  as  I  love 
you,  for  I  never  esteemed." 

"  Ah  !      If  I  could  only  believe  that  !" 

••  You  may  believe  it.  I  never  told  a  lie. 
Myhearl  turned  to  you  when  I  saw  you  in 
my  dream,  and  thought  of  your  lone;  fidel- 
ity and  no  reward.  My  poor  Joseph,  my 
heart  turned  more  and  more  to  you  as  the 
ship  sailed  homeward,  and  you  were  the 
one  that  made  coming  home  seem  sweetest 
to  me.  Where  are  your  eyes?  Since  I 
came  home  have  I  ever  regretted  the 
creature  I  used  to  pine  for?"  (She  put 
her  white  hands  to  her  face  and  blushed.) 
"Women  don't  make  love  as  men  do,  but 
they  shore  it  in  more  ways  than  men  do  to 
those  who  will  but  see  it." 

"  Then  show  me  a  little  love — real  love. 
Make  me  your  husband  !" 

"How  can  I?" 

"Easy  enough.  Divorce  that  villain, 
and  marry  me.  It  is  a  plain  case  of  de- 
sertion and  infidelity.  You  can  get  a 
divorce  for  the  askinar." 


SINGLE  HE  ART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


87 


"What!     Go  to  law?" 

"  Why  not?  It's  done  every  day  by 
your  betters." 

She  colored  faintly,  and  said,  with  gen- 
tle dignity,  "  My  superiors,  you  mean.  They 
do  a  many  things  I  can't,  besides  painting 
and  powdering  of  their  faces.  Me  go  to  a 
court  of  law  to  part  those  that  were  joined 
till  death  in  a  church?  That  I  could  never 
do." 

Piuder  got  angry.  He  belonged  to  a  de- 
bating club,  and  he  let  her  have  it  accord- 
ingly. "  That  is  all  superstition.  The 
priests  used  to  tell  ignorant  folks  that 
marriage  was  a  sacrament,  and  only  the 
Pope  of  Rome  could  annul  it.  But  we  are 
not  slaves  of  superstition  and  priestcraft 
nowadays.  Marriage  is  not  a  sacrament ; 
it  is  a  contract,  no  more,  no  less.  Your 
husband  has  broken  it,  contrary  to  law, 
and  you  have  only  got  to  dissolve  it  ac- 
cording to  law.  Wouldn't  I  divorce  a  faith- 
less wife  for  you?  And  you  would  do  as 
much  for  me,  if  you  loved  me  as  I  love 
you." 

"I  love  you  better,"  said  she;  "by  the 
same  token,  I  couldn't  quarrel  with  you  as 
you  do  with  me.  Oh !  pray,  pray  don't  ask 
me  to  go  into  a  public  court,  and  say  I  only 
come  to  be  freed  from  a  wicked  husband, 
and  then  have  to  own  another  man  is  wait- 
ing to  take  me.  Ah !  if  you  respected  me 
as  I  do  you,  you  couldn't — " 

"  I  have  respected  you  these  ten  years, 
and  I've  shown  it.  Now  it  is  time  to  re- 
spect myself.  I'm  the  laughing-stock  of 
rny  friends  for  my  calf-love." 

"  Ah !"  cried  she  in  dismay,  "  if  they 
have  been  and  wounded  your  vanity,  it 
is  all  over.  A  man's  love  cannot  stand 
against  his  vanity.  But  oh!  if  they  knew 
how  you  are  loved  and  respected,  they 
would  be  ashamed  to  play  upon  you  so. 
Dear  Joseph,  be  patient,  as  I  am.  Be- 
lieve that  I  love  you  better  than  you  or 
any  man  born  can  ever  love  me.  You 
are  so  agitated  and  so  angry  you  frighten 
me,  dear.  Do  but  think  calmly  one  mo- 
ment: what  is  the  best  thing  in  holy  wed- 
lock, after  all?  Is  it  not  the  respect,  and 
the  tender  affection,  and  the  sweet  com- 
pany?    What  husband  is  more  cherished 


than  you,  or  better  loved?  My  sister  loves 
you;  my  child  loves  you;  I  love  you  dear- 
ly. If  you  could  but  see  us  when  you  are 
away,  how  dead  alive  the  place  is,  and  we 
all  sit  mum-chance;  but  the  moment  you 
come  we  are  all  gay  and  talkative.  You 
are  our  master,  our  delight,  our  very  sun- 
shine, and  is  that  nothing?" 

Joseph  Pinder  drank  the  honey  with 
glistening  eyes,  but  he  could  Dot  quite 
digest  it.  He  said  these  were  sweet  words, 
and  there  was  a  time  when  they  would  have 
charmed  his  ears,  and  blinded  him  to  the 
hard  truth.  But  he  was  older  now,  and 
had  learned  that  woman's  words  are  air. 
It  is  only  by  her  actions  you  can  ever  know 
her  heart. 

"James  Mansell,"  he  said,  "is  a  man  of 
my  age.  'Tisn't  likely  we  shall  both  out- 
live him.  So  when  you  say  you  will  not 
divorce  him,  that  is  as  much  as  to  say  you 
will  never  be  my  wife  till  he  is  so  obliging 
as  to  die.  What  is  that  but  treating  me 
like  a  calf?  I  won't  die  a  bachelor  to  please 
James  Mansell,  nor  any  woman  that  clings 
to  him  for  life.  I  will  leave  this,  kill  or 
cure." 

Sarah  objected  firmly  to  that.  "No, 
Joseph,  if  we  are  to  part,  it  is  for  me  to 
go  and  you  to  stay.  This  pretty  house  and 
garden  I  have  enjoyed  so,  'tis  the  fruit  of 
your  industry,  and  your  skill,  and  your 
affection,  that  I  cannot  recompense  as  you 
require,  and  so  you  will  call  me  ungrateful 
some  day,  and  break  my  heart  altogether. 
My  dear,  you  must  oblige  me  in  this  one 
thing,  you  must  live  here,  and  send  me 
back  to  my  little  shop,  and  let  me  see  you 
get  rich,  and  make  some  woman  happy 
that  will  love  you  better  than  I  do.  You 
loved  me  most  when  I  stood  at  that  little 
counter  in  Green  Street,  and  didn't  even 
pretend  to  be  a  lady."  She  began  steadily 
enough,  but  with  all  her  resolution,  her 
voice  failed,   and  she  ended  in  tears. 

"  No,  Sarah,  you  are  not  going  to  get  it 
all  your  own  way.  Lucy  loves  me,  and 
would  be  my  daughter  to-morrow.  I 
won't  hurt  her;  and  I  could  not  let  you 
go  back  to  Green  Street.  I'll  take  noth- 
ing with  me  but  my  carpet-bag  and  my 
pride,  and  the  heart  ycu  nave  worn  out." 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


Then  Sarah  began  to  cry  in  earnest. 

"  Oh,  Joseph,"  said  she,  in  accents  to 
melt  a  stone,  "  is  it  not  sorrow  enough  to 
part?  Can  you  part  in  anger?  I  wouldn't 
be  angry  with  you  if  you  were  to  kill 
me." 

"Part  in  anger?"  said  he.  "Heaven 
forbid!  Forgive  me,  my  darling,  if  I 
have  spoken  a  harsh  word;  and  give  me 
your  hand  at  parting."  He  put  out  his 
hand,  she  seized  it,  and  kissed  it  passion- 
ately. He  kissed  hers  as  tenderly,  and 
their  tears  fell  fast  upon  each  other's 
hands.  But  he  was  a  man,  and  had  said 
he  would  go.  So  he  actually  did  tear 
himself  away,  and  catch  up  his  bag,  and 
through  the  wicket  gate;  and  such  was 
his  nianly  resolution  and  his  wounded 
pride  that  he  went  thirty — or  at  least 
twenty-rive — yards  before  he  wished  him- 
self back  upon  any  terms  whatever.  Till 
now  he  never  knew  how  much  she  loved 
him. 

As  for  Sarah,  she  did  not  attempt  to  de- 
ceive herself  or  any  one  else.  She  laid  her 
browon  the  little  table  and  Bobbed  piteous- 
lv.  Deborah  came  running  to  her,  a 
off  her  bonnet  the  first  thing,  for  why  should 
she  spoil  that  as  well  as  break  her  heart? 
But  while  saving  the  sacred  bonnet,  she 
was  trying   to  comfort   the  heart. 

"How  could  he  leave  you?  How  could 
you  let  him?     It  will  kill  you." 

"Perhaps  not.     I  trust  in  Heaven." 

"Don't  cry  like  that,  dear,"  sobbed 
Deborah.  "He  will  come  back  in  a 
month  or  two,  and  then  you  will  give 
in  to  him." 

"No.  I  can  only  cry  for  him,  and  trust 
in  my  Redeemer,  as  I  did  when  that  creat- 
ure played  me  false.  I  didn't  trust  in  vain. 
Bring  me  my  child." 

Deborah  put  Lucy  on  her  lap,  and  Sarah 
fondled  her  and  cried  over  her.  Presently 
what  should  Deborah  see  but  Joseph  Pin- 
der  at  the  wicket  gate  with  his  bag.  She 
ran  to  him  all  in  a  hurry  and  whispered, 
"Not  yet,  ye  foolish — you  mustn't  come 
back  for  a  week;  then  she  will  be  like 
was." 

"I'm  not  coming  back  at  all,"  said  Pin- 
der,  loud  and  aggressively.     "It  is  only 


out  of  civility.  Lady  and  gentleman  from 
America  looking  everywhere  for  her." 
Then  he  held  the  gate  open,  and  beck- 
oned to  a  lady  and  gentleman.  They  ap- 
peared, and  at  his  invitation  passed 
through  the  wicket. 

Now  Sarah  had  ears  like  a  hare.  She 
heard  ever}'  word,  and  her  smile  of  celes- 
tial love  and  just  a  little  earthly  triumph 
at  Pinder's  voice  and  self-deception  was 
delicious;  only,  as  she  had  been  crying, 
she  could  not  face  these  visitors  all  in  a 
moment,  but  dried  her  eyes  and  tried  to 
compose  her  features.  Just  then  Pinder 
pointed  her  out  in  silence,  and  Solomon 
alked  gravely  down  the  garden, 
and  drew  up  stiflly  at  her  right  hand, 
Mrs.  Grace  also  moved  toward  Sarah,  but 
hung  hack  a  little.  There  was  an  air  of 
solemnity  about  them  both.  Pinder,  in 
stead  of  retiring  again,  crept  down  a  little 
way  witli  his  hag,  and  a  swift  exchange  of 
words  passed  between  him  and  Deborah. 

"  You  came  out  of  civility  :  what  are  you 
staying  for?" 

"Curiosity,"  snarled  Binder. 

A-  soon  as  Mrs.  Mansell  saw  Solomon 
Grace  she  said,  eagerly,  "  <  )h,  my  good 
friend,  you  here?  Welcome!"  She  pi:t 
out  both  hands  to  him. 

He  took  them,  and  said  gravely,  "We 
bring  you  serious  news." 

At  the  sound  "we,  '  Sarah  turned,  and 
there  was  .Mrs.  Grace.  She  welcomed  ner 
just  as  she  had  done  her  husband.  Lucy 
made  a  school  courtesy  to  both  of  them. 
There  was  a  hesitation.  Grace  and  his 
wife  looked  at  each  other. 

"Yes,  you  can  tell  her,"  said  Elizabeth. 

Sarah  Mansell  eyed  them  keenly.  "  Yes, 
you  can  tell  me:  whoever  is  false  to  me  is 
dead  to  me  from  that  moment."  She  half 
divined  the  truth.  Some  women  can  read 
faces,  manner,  incidents,  all  in  a  moment, 
and  put  them  together.     This  was  one. 

"Yes,"  said  Elizabeth,  "I  am  glad  you 
are  prepared  for  it.  James  Mansell  is  no 
more." 

Then  Grace  handed  her  the  certificate  of 
Mansell's  death. 

Mrs.  Grace  resumed:  "He  died  in  the 
hospital,  and   he   died   penitent,  begging 


SINGLEHEART,   AND    DOUBLEFACE. 


forgiveness  of  those  he  had  injured.  Mrs. 
Mansell,  I  stood  by  his  bedside  and  par- 
doned him." 

"And  so  do  I,"  said  Sarah.  "  I  forgive 
him  with  all  my  heart,  as  I  hope  to  be  one 
day  forgiven;"  and  she  raised  her  pious 
eyes  to  heaven. 

While  this  was  going  on,  Deborah  came 
behind  Pinder,  who  was  listening  gravely 
to  every  word,  and  quietly  took  the  bag 
away  out  of  his  hand,  and  then  his  hat; 
both  of  these  she  handed  to  the  servant- 
girl,  and  bade  her  hide  them.  Susan  took 
the  hint  in  a  moment.  Thus  disarmed, 
Joseph  sat  meekly  down  in  a  chair  at 
some  distance,  and  Lucy  immediately 
seated  herself  on  his  knee,  with  an  arm 
round  his  neck.  Sarah  parted  for  the 
present  with  her  American  friends,  but 
took  their  address,  and  in  due  course 
entertained   them   hospitably. 

But  this  was  a  solemn  day,  and  though 
she  scorned  to  feign  a  single  particle  of 
regret,  yet  she  felt  it  was  not  a  day  for 
conviviality.  When  she  had  bidden  the 
Graces  "good-by"  at  the  wicket  gate,  she 
walked  slowly  toward  the  house.  Then, 
looking  askant,  her  eye  fell  on  Pinder, 
with  Lucy  on  his  knee.  She  stopped  and 
looked  at  them.  Just  then  the  servant 
came  out  into  the  porch  and  announced 
dinner.  Sarah  smiled  sweetly  on  the 
pair,  and  said,   "Come,  my  dears." 

They  both  came;  Joseph  very  humbly. 
But  Sarah  never  uttered  one  syllable  of 
comment  on  his  temporary  revolt.  He, 
on  his  part,  tried  his  best  to  make  her  for- 
get their  one  quarrel.  But  that  was  quite 
unnecessary,  and  she  let  him  see  it.  She 
never  thought  him  in  the  wrong,  but  only 
thought  herself  in  the  right,  and  she  never 
showed  him  even  the  shadow  of  resentment 
or  exultation.  She  was  "  Singleheart, "  and 
she  loved  him. 

When,  after  waiting  a  decent  time,  he 
threw  out  a  timid  hint  that  he  hoped  he 
might  call  her  his  own  before  so  very  long, 
she  opened  her  eyes  and  said,  "  Whenever 
you  1  lease,  dear.  T  m  only  wa  it  in  g  your 
pleasure."     Hewasamazed.     But  that  did 


not  prevent  his  catching  her  to  him  with 
rapture. 

In  the  ardent  colloquy  that  followed  this 
embrace  he  said  he  had  been  fearing  she 
would  demand  a  year's  delay. 

"Not  I,"  said  she;  "nor  yet  a  month's. 
To  be  sure,  I  have  my  own  old-fashioned 
notions  of  decency;  but  when  it  comes  to 
ceremony,  I  would  not  set  up  such  straws 
against  you,  not  for  one  moment.  What 
is  etiquette  to  me?  I  am  not  a  lady."  [I 
am  not  so  sure  of  that  as  she  was.] 

So  they  were  married  off-hand,  and  she 
soon  showed  Joe  Pinder  whether  she  loved 
him  or  not.  All  he  had  ever  dreamed  of 
love  never  came  near  hers.  His  happiness 
is  perfect;  and  ten  times  the  sweeter  that 
he  waited  for  it,  pined  for  it,  lost  it  en- 
tirely, earned  it  again,  gained  it  by  halves, 
then  enjoyed  it  to  the  full. 

To  the  world  they  are  just  thriving 
traders,  very  diligent  and  square  in  busi- 
ness, but  benevolent;  yet  their  private  his- 
tory is  more  romantic  than  the  lives  of 
nineteen   poets  in  twenty. 

Deborah  is  courting  diligently.  One 
Sunday  afternoon  Lucy,  nodding  over  a 
good  book,  yet  fitfully  observant,  saw  her 
wooed  by  three  eligible  parties  in  turn  over 
the  palings.  Then  Lucy  asked  her  which 
she  was  going  to  marry. 

"  How  can  I  tell?"  said  she. 

"Are  they  all  three  so  very  nice?"  in- 
quired Lucy,  slyly*. 

"  They  are  all  three  nicer  than  none  at 
all,"  was  Deborah's  reply. 

Lucy's  Last. 

"Aunt  Deb,  I  don't  think  you  will  ever 
be  married." 

"  That's  good  news  for  me.  And  why 
not?" 

"Because  marriages  are  made  in 
heaven. " 

Now  it  is  not  for  me  to  predict  the  future ; 
but  from  my  observations  of  the  Lucy  Man- 
sells  I  have  known,  I  should  expect  to  find 
that  young  lady  at  seventeen  excessively 
modest  and  retiring,  but  as  stupid  as  an 
owl. 


90 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


TIT    FOR   TAT. 


CHAPTER  I. 

It  was  a  glaring  afternoon  in  the  short 
but  fiery  Russian  summer.  Two  live  pict- 
ures, one  warm,  one  very  cool,  lay  side  by 
side. 

A  band  of  fifty  peasant  girls,  in  bright- 
spotted  tunics,  snow-white  leggings,  and 
turban  handkerchiefs,  blue,  crimson,  or 
yellow,  moved  in  line  across  the  pale 
green  grass,  and  plied  their  white  rakes 
with  the  free,  broad,  supple,  and  graceful 
movements  of  women  whom  no  corset  had 
ever  confined  and  stiffened. 

Close  by  this  streak  of  vivid  color,  mov- 
ing in  afternoon  haze  of  potable  gold  over 
gentle  green,  stood  a  grove  of  ancient  birch- 
trees  with  great  smooth  silver  stems ;  acool 
brook  babbled  along  in  the  deep  shade;  and 
on  the  carpet  of  green  mosses,  and  among 
the  silver  columns,  sat  a  lady  with  noble 
but  hardish  features,  in  a  gray  dress  and 
a  dark  brown  hood.  Her  attendant,  a  girl 
of  thirteen,  sparkled  apart  in  pale  blue, 
seated  on  the  ground,  nursing  the  lady's 
guitar. 

This  was  the  tamer  picture  of  the  two, 
yet,  on  paper,  the  more  important,  for  the 
lady  was,  and  is,  a  remarkable  woman — 
Anna  Petrovna  Staropolsky,  a  true  Rus- 
sian aristocrat,  ennobled,  not  by  tli6  breath 
of  any  modern  ruler,  but  by  antiauity,  local 
sovereignty,  and  the  land  she  and  hers  had 
held  and  governed  for  a  thousand  years. 

It  may  throw  some  light  upon  her  char- 
acter to  present  her  before  and  after  the 
emancipation  of  her  slaves. 

Her  family  had  never  maltreated  serfs 
within  the  memory  of  man,  and  she  in- 
herited their  humanity. 

For  all  that,  she  was  very  haughty ;  but 
then  her  towering  pride  was  balanced  bj* 


two  virtues  and  one  foible.  She  had  a 
feminine  detestation  of  violence — would 
not  allow  a  horse  to  be  whipped,  far  less 
a  man  or  a  woman.  She  was  a  wonder- 
fully just  woman,  and,  to  come  to  her 
foible,  she  was  fanatica  per  la  musicaj 
or,  if  aught  so  vulgar  and  strong  as  En- 
glish may  intrude  into  a  joyous  science 
whose  terms  are  Italian,   music  mad. 

This  was  so  well  known  all  over  her 
vast  estates  that  her  serfs,  if  they  wanted 
new  isliahs— alias  log-huts — a  new  peal 
of  forty  church  bells,  mounting  by  perfect 
gradation  from  a  muffin-man's  up  to  a 
deaving  dome  of  bell-metal,  or,  in  short, 
any  unusual  favor,  would  get  the  priests 
i  ir  the  deacons  to  versify  their  petition,  and 
Bend  it  to  the  lady,  with  a  solo,  a  quartet, 
and  a  little  chorus.  The  following  sequence 
of  events  could  then  be  counted  on.  They 
would  sing  their  prayer  at  her;  she  would 
listen  politely,  with  a  few  winces;  she 
would  then  ignore  "  the  verbiage,"  as  that 
intellectual  oddity,  the  public  singer,  calls 
it,  and  fall  tooth  and  nail  upon  the  musical 
composition,  correcting  it  a  little  peevishly. 
This  done,  she  would  proceed  to  their  in- 
terpretation of  their  own  music.  "Let  us 
read  it  right,  such  as  it  is,"  was  her  favor- 
ite formula. 

When  she  had  licked  the  thing  into 
grammar  and  interpretation,  her  hard 
features  used  to  mollify  so,  she  seemed 
another  woman.  Then  a  canny  moujik, 
appointed  beforehand  to  watch  her  counte- 
nance, would  revert  for  a  moment  to  ''  the 
verbiage." 

"Oh,  as  to  that — "  the  lady  would  say, 
and  concede  the  substantial  favor  with 
comparative  indifference. 

When  the  edict  of  emancipation  came, 
and  disarmed  cruel  proprietors,  but  took  no 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


'.il 


substantial  benefit  from  her  witbout  a  full 
equivalent,  sbe  made  a  progress  through 
her  estates,  and  convened  her  people.  She 
read  and  explained  the  ukase  and  the  com- 
pensatory clauses,  and  showed  them  she 
could  make,  the  change  difficult  and  dis- 
agreeable to  them  in  detail.  "But,"  said 
she,  "I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  I 
shall  exact  no  impossible  purchases  nor 
crippling  compensations  from  you.  Our 
father  the  emperor  takes  nothing  from  me 
that  I  value,  and  he  gives  me  good  money, 
bearing  five  per  cent,  for  indifferent  land 
that  brought  me  one  per  cent  clear.  He 
has  relieved  me  of  your  taxes,  your  law- 
suits, and  your  empty  cupboards,  and 
given  me  a  good  bargain,  you  a  bad  one. 
So  let  us  settle  matters  beforehand.  If  you 
can  make  your  fortunes  with  ten  acres  per 
house,  in  spite  of  taxes,  increasing  mouths, 
laziness,  and  your  beloved  corn-brandy, 
why  I  give  you  leave  to  look  down  on 
Anna  Petrovna,  for  she  is  your  inferior 
in  talent,  and  talent  governs  the  world 
nowadays.  But  if  you  find  Independence, 
and  farms  the  size  of  my  garden,  mean 
Poverty  now,  and,  when  mouths  multiply, 
Hunger,  then  you  can  come  to  Anna  Pe- 
trovna, just  as  you  used,  and  we  will  share 
the  good  emperor's  five  per  cents." 

She  was  as  good  as  her  word,  and  made 
the  change  easy  by  private  contracts  in  the 
spirit  of  the  enactment,  but  more  lenient 
to  the  serfs  than  its  literal  clauses. 

Bj-  these  means,  and  the  accumulated 
respect  of  ages,  she  retained  all  the  power 
and  influence  she  cared  for,  and  this  brings 
me  fairly  to  my  summer  picture.  Those 
fifty  peasant  girls  were  enfranchised  serfs 
who  would  not  have  put  their  hands  to  a 
rake  for  any  other  proprietor  thereabouts. 
Yet  they  were  working  with  a  good  heart 
for  Anna  Petrovna  at  fourpence  per  day, 
and  singing  like  mavises  as  they  marched. 
Catinka  Kusminoff  sang  on  the  left  of  the 
band,  Daria  Solovieff  on  the  right. 

They  were  now  commencing  the  last 
drift  of  the  whole  field,  and  would  soon 
sweep  the  edge  of  the  grove,  where  Ma- 
dame Staropolsky — as  we  English  should 
call  her — sat  pale  and  listless.  She  was 
a  widow,  and  her  only  son  had  betrayed 


symptoms  of  heart-disease.  Sad  reminis- 
cences clouded  those  lofty  but  somewhat 
angular  features,  and  she  looked  gloomy, 
hard  and  severe. 

But  it  so  happened  that  as  the  band  of 
women  came  alongside  this  grove,  which 
bounded  the  garden  from  the  fields,  Daria 
Solovieff  took  up  the  song  with  marvelous 
power  and  sweetness.  She  was  all  uncon- 
scious of  a  refined  listener :  it  was  out  of 
doors,  she  was  leading  the  whole  band,  and 
she  sang  out  from  a  chest  and  frame  whose 
free  play  had  never  been  confined  by  stays, 
and  with  a  superb  voice,  all  power,  volume, 
roundness,  sweetness,  bell-like  clearness, 
and  that  sympathetic  eloquence  which 
pierces  and  thrills  the  heart. 

In  most  parts  of  Europe  this  superb 
organ  would  have  sung  out  in  church, 
and  been  famous  for  miles  around.  But 
the  Russians  are  still  in  some  things  Orien- 
tal; only  men  and  boys  must  sing  their  an- 
thems ;  so  the  greatest  voice  in  the  district 
was  unknown  to  the  greatest  musician.  She 
stood  up  from  her  seat  and  actually  trembled 
— for  she  was  Daria 's  counterpart,  organ- 
ized as  finely  to  hear  and  feel  as  Daria  to 
sing.  The  lady's  lofty  but  hardish  feat- 
ures seemed  to  soften  all  their  outlines 
as  she  listened,  a  complacent,  mild,  and 
rapt  expression  overspread  them,  her  clear 
gray  eyes  moistened,  melted,  and  deepened, 
and  lo !  she  was  beautiful ! 

She  crept  along  the  grove,  listening,  and 
when  the  sound  retired,  directed  her  little 
servant  to  follow  the  band  and  invite  Daria 
to  come  and  help  her  prune  roses  nextda}r. 

The  invitation  was  accepted  with  joy, 
for  the  work  was  pleasant,  and  the  re- 
muneration for  working  in  Anna  Petrov- 
na's  garden  was  not  money,  but  some  arti- 
cle of  female  dress  or  ornament.  It  might 
be  only  a  ribbon  or  a  cotton  handkerchief, 
but  even  then  it  would  be  worth  more  than 
a  woman's  wage,  and  please  her  ten  times 
more :  the  contemplation  of  a  chiffon  is  a 
sacred  joy,  the  feel  of  fourpence  a  mere 
human  satisfaction. 

So  the  next  day  came  Daria,  a  tall,  lithe, 
broad-shouldered  lass,  very  fair,  with  hair 
like  a  new  sovereign  —  pardon,  oh,  race 
Sclavonic,  my  British  similes!  marvelous 


92 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


white  skin,  and  color  like  a  delicate  rose, 
eyes  of  deep  violet,  and  teeth  incredibly 
white  and  even. 

When  she  went  among  the  flowers  she 
just  seemed  to  be  one  of  them. 

The  lady  of  the  house  came  out  to  her 
with  gauntlets  and  scissors,  and  a  servant 
and  a  gig  umbrella,  whereat  the  child  of 
nature  smiled,  and  revealed  much  ivory. 

Madame  snipped  off  dead  roses  along 
with  her  for  nearly  half  an  hour,  then 
observed,  "  This  is  a  waste  of  time.  Come 
under  that  tree  with  me.  Now  sing  me 
that  song  you  sang  yesterday  in  the  field." 

The  fair  cheek  was  dyed  with  blushes 
directly.  "Me  sing  before  you,  Anna 
Petrovna !" 

"  Why  not?  Come,  Daria,  do  not  be 
afraid  of  one  old  woman  who  loves  music, 
and  can  appreciate  you  better  than  most. 
Sing  to  me,  my  little  pigeon." 

The  timid  dove,  thus  encouraged,  fixed 
her  eyes  steadily  on  the  ground  and  cooed 
a  little  song. 

The  tears  stood  in  the  lady's  eyes.  "  You 
are  frightened  still,"  said  she;  "but  why? 
See,  I  do  not  praise  you,  and  I  weep.  That 
is  the  best  comment.  You  will  not  always 
be  afraid  of  me." 

"  Oh,  no;  you  are  so  kind." 

Daria's  shyness  was  soon  overcome,  and 
every  other  day  she  had  to  conic  and  play 
at  gardening  a  bit,  then  work  at  music. 

When  the  winter  came  her  patroness 
could  not  do  without  her.  She  sent  for 
old  Kyril,  Daria's  father,  and  offered  to 
adopt  her.  He  did  not  seem  charmed; 
said  she  was  his  only  daughter;  and  he 
should  miss  her. 

"  Why,  you  will  mam'  her,  and  so  lose 
her,"  said  madame. 

He  admitted  that  was  the  custom.  "  The 
go-between  arranges  a  match,  and  one 
daughter  after  another  leaves  the  nest. 
But  I  have  only  this  one,  and  she  is  in- 
dustrious, and  a  song-bird;  and  I  have 
forbidden  the  house  to  all  these  old  women 
who  yoke  couples  together  blindfold.  To 
be  sure,  there  is  a  young  fellow,  a  cousin 
of  mine,  comes  over  from  the  town  on  Sun- 
days and  brings  Daria  flowers,  and  me  a 
flask  of  vodka." 


"  Then  he  is  welcome  to  one  of  you?" 

"As  snow  to  sledge-horses;  but  Daria 
gives  him  little  encouragement.  She  puts 
up  with  nim,  that  is  all." 

•'  You  would  like  a  good  house,  and  fifty 
acres  more  than  the  ten  a  bountiful  State 
bestows  on  you,  rent  free  forever." 

"Forgive  me  for  contradicting  you, 
Anna  Petrovna;  I  should  like  them  ex- 
tremely." 

"  And  I  should  like  to  adopt  Daria." 

The  tender  father  altered  his  tone  direct- 
by.  "  Anna  Petrovna,  it  is  not  our  custom 
to  refuse  you  anything." 

"And  it  is  not.  your  custom  to  lose  any- 
thing by  obliging  me." 

"That  is  well  known." 

After  this,  of  course,  the  parties  soon 
can:"  to  .-m  understanding. 

Daria  was  to  be  adopted,  ami  some  land 
ami  a  house  made  over  to  her  and  her 
father  as  joint  proprietors  during  his  life- 
time, to  Daria  after  his  decease. 

Daria,  during  her  father's  lifetime,  was 
to  live  with  Madame  Staropolsky  as  a  sort 
of  humble  but  valued  companion. 

When  it  was  all  settled,  the  only  one  of 
the  three  who  had  a  misgiving  was  the 
promoter. 

"This  song-bird,"  said  she  to  herself, 
"has  already  too  much  power  over  me. 
How  will  it  be  when  she  is  a  woman? 
Her  voice  bewitches  me.  She  has  no  need 
to  sing:  if  she  but  speaks  she  enchants 
me.  Have  i  brought  my  unstress  into  the 
house?"  This  presentiment  flashed  through 
her  mind,  but  did  not  abide  at  that  time. 

One  Sunday  she  saw  Daria  strolling 
along  the  road  with  a  young  man.  He 
parted  with  her  at  the  door,  but  was  a 
long  time  doing  it,  and  gave  her  some 
flowers,  and  lingered  and  looked  after  her. 

Anna  Petrovna  felt  a  twinge,  and  the 
next  moment  blushed  for  herself.  "  What ! 
jealous!"  said  she.  "  The  girl  has  certainly 
bewitched  me." 

She  asked  Daria,  carelessly,  who  the 
young  man  was.  Daria  made  no  secret 
of  the  matter.  "It  is  only  Ivan  Ulitch 
Koscko,  who  comes  many  miles  every 
Sunday." 

"  To  court  you?" 


TIT  FOR    TAT. 


93 


"  I  suppose  it  is." 

"Does  he  love  you?" 

"He  says  so." 

"Do  you  love  him?" 

"Not  much;  but  he  is  very  good." 

"  Is  he  to  marry  you?" 

"  I  don't  know.  I  would  rather  be  as  I 
am." 

"  I  wonder  which  you  love  best — that 
young  man  or  me?" 

"  I  could  never  love  a  young  man  as  I 
love  you,  Anna  Petrovna.  It  is  quite 
different." 

Madame  Staropolsky  looked  keenly  at 
her  to  see  whether  this  was  audacious 
humbug  or  pure  innocence,  and  it  ap- 
peared to  be  the  latter;  so  she  embraced 
her  warmly.  Then  Daria,  who  did  not 
lack  intelligence,  said,  "If  you  wish  it,  I 
will  ask  Ivan  Ulitch  not  to  come  again." 

This  would  have  been  agreeable  to 
Madame  Staropolsky,  but  her  sense  of 
justice  stepped  in.  "No,"  said  she;  "I 
will  interfere  with  no  prior  claims." 

This  lady  played  the  violin  in  tune; 
the  violoncello  sonorously,  not  snorously; 
the  piano  finely;  and  the  harp  to  per- 
fection. 

She  soon  enlarged  her  pupil's  musical 
knowledge  greatly,  but  was  careful  not 
to  alter  her  style,  which  indeed  was  won- 
derfully natural,  and  full  of  genius.  She 
also  instructed  her  in  history,  languages, 
and  arithmetic,  and  seemed  to  grow 
younger  now  she  had  something  young 
to  teach. 

Christmas  came,  and  her  son  Alexis  was 
expected,  his  education  at  St.  Petersburg 
being  finished.  Until  this  year  he  had 
not  visited  these  parts  for  some  time.  His 
mother  used  to  go  to  the  capital  to  spend 
the  winter  vacation  with  him  there;  the 
summer  at  Tsarskoe.  But  there  was  a 
famous  portrait  of  him  at  seven  years  of 
age — a  lovely  boy,  with  hair  like  new- 
burnished  copper,  but  wonderful  dark 
e}"es  and  brows,  his  dress  a  tunic  and 
trousers  of  purple  silk,  the  latter  tucked 
into  Wellington  boots,  purple  cap,  with 
a  short  peacock's  feather.  We  have 
Gainsborough's  blue  boy,  but  really  this 
might  be  called  the  Russian   purple  boy. 


A  wonder-striking  picture  of  a  beautiful 
original. 

Daria  had  often  stood  before  this  purple 
boy,  and  wondered  at  his  beauty.  She 
even  thought  it  was  a  pity  such  an  angel 
should  ever  grow  up,  and  deteriorate  into 
a  man. 

The  sledge  was  sent  ten  miles  to  meet 
Alexis,  and  while  he  was  yet  three  miles 
distant  the  tinkling  of  the  bells  announced 
him.  On  he  came,  at  the  rate  of  fifteen 
miles  an  hour,  with  three  horses — -a  power- 
ful black  trotter  in  the  middle,  and  two 
galloping  bays,  one  on  each  side,  all  three 
with  tails  to  stuff  a  sofa  and  manes  like 
lions.  Everybody  in  the  village  turned 
out  to  welcome  him ;  every  dog  left  his 
occupation  and  followed  him  on  the  spot; 
the  sledge  dashed  up  to  the  front  veranda, 
the  ready  doors  flew  open,  the  family  were 
all  in  the  hall,  read}-  with  a  loving  wel- 
come; and  the  thirty  village  dogs,  having 
been  now  and  then  flogged  for  their  hospi- 
tality,  stood  aloof  in  a  semicircle,  and  were 
blissful  with  excitement,  and  barked  sym- 
pathetic and  loud.  When  the  mother  locked 
the  son  in  her  arms  the  tears  stood  in  Daria's 
eyes;  but  she  was  disappointed  in  his  looks, 
after  the  picture ;  to  be  sure,  he  was  muffled 
to  the  nose  in  furs,  and  his  breath,  frozen 
flying,  had  turned  his  mustache  and  eye- 
brows into  snow.  Beard  he  had  none,  or 
he  might  have  passed  for  Father  Christ- 
mas— and  he  was  only  twenty. 

But  in  the  evening  he  was  half  as  big, 
and  three  times  as  handsome. 

His  mother  made  Daria  sing  to  him, 
and  he  was  enraptured. 

He  gazed  on  her  all  the  time  with  two 
glorious  black  eyes,  and  stealing  a  glance 
at  him,  as  women  will,  she  found  him,  like 
his  mother,  beautified  by  her  own  enchant- 
ment, and  he  seemed  to  resemble  his  por- 
trait more  and  more. 

From  that  first  night  he  could  hardly 
take  his  eyes  off  her.  These  grand  orbs, 
always  dwelling  on  her,  troubled  her  heart 
and  her  senses,  and  by  degrees  elicited  timid 
glances  in  return.  These  and  the  seduc- 
tions of  her  voice  completed  his  conquest, 
and  he  fell  passionately  in  love  with  her. 
She  saw  and  returned  his  love,  but  tried 


94 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


innocent  artifices  to  conceal  it.  Her  heart 
was  in  a  tumult.  Hitherto  she  had  been 
-as  cool  as  a  cucumber  with  Ivan  and  every 
other  young  man,  and  wondered  what 
young  women  could  see  so  attractive  in 
them.  Now  she  was  caught  herself,  and 
fluttered  like  a  wild  bird  suddenly  caged. 

Ivan  Ulitch  Koscko,  who  could  not  make 
her  love  him,  used  to  console  himself  for 
her  coolness  by  saying  it  was  her  nature 
— a  cool  affection  and  moderate  esteem  was 
all  she  had  to  give  to  any  man.  So  many 
an  endured  lover  talks;  but  suddenly  the 
right  man  comes,  and  straightway  the  icy 
Hecla  reveals  her  infinite  fires. 

Alexis  soon  found  an  opportunity  to  tell 
Daria  he  adored  her. 

She  panted  with  happiness  first,  and  hid 
her  blushing  lace,  but  the  next  moment  she 
quivered  with  alarms. 

''Oh,  no,  no," she  murmured,  "you  must 
not!  What  have  I  done?  Your  mothei ■-- 
she  would  never  forgive  me.  It  was  not 
to  steal  her  son's  heart  she  brought  me 
here."  And  the  innocent  girl  was  all  mis- 
givings, and  began  to  cry. 

Alexis  consoled  her  and  kissed  her  tears 
away,  and  would  not  part  with  her  till  she 
smiled  again,  and  interchanged  vows  of 
love  and  constancy  with  him. 

Under  love's  potent  influence  she  left 
him  radiant. 

But  when  she  thought  it  all  over,  and 
him  no  longer  there  to  overpower  her,  her 
misgivings  grew,  and  she  was  terrified. 
She  hail  an  insight  into  character,  and 
saw  beneath  the  surface  of  Anna  Pe- 
trovna.  That  lady  loved  her,  but  would 
hate  her  if  she  stole  the  affections  of  her 
son,  her  idol. 

Daria's  deep  eyes  fixed  themselves  all  of 
a  sudden  on  the  future.  "  Misfortune  is 
coming  here,"  she  said. 

Then  she  crossed  herself,  bowed  her  head 
piously  in  that  attitude,  and  prayed  long 
and  earnestly. 

Then  she  rose  and  went  straight  to  Anna 
Petrovna.  She  found  her  knitting  mittens 
for  Alexis. 

She  sat  at  her  feet,  and  said  wearily, 
"Anna  Petrovna,  I  ask  leave  to  go 
home." 


"  Why?  what  is  the  matter?" 

"My  father." 

"  Is  he  unwell?" 

"  No.  But  he  has  not  seen  me  for  some 
time." 

"Is  it  for  long?" 

"  Not  very  long. " 

Anna  Petrovna  eyed  her  steadily.  "  Per- 
haps you  are  like  me,  of  a  jealous  disposi- 
tion in  your  little  quiet  way.  Tell  the  truth 
now,  my  pigeon,  you  are  jealous  of  Alosha." 

"  Me  jealous  of  Alexis?" 

"Oh,  jealousy  spares  neither  age  nor 
sex.  Come,  you  are — just  a  little.  Con- 
fess now." 

Daria  was  surprised ;  but  she  was  silent 
at  first;  and  then,  being  terribly  afraid  lest 
one  so  shrewd  should  discover  her  real  sen- 
timents,  she  had  the  tact  and  the  self- 
defensive  subtlety  to  defend  herslef  so 
tamely  against  this  charge  that  she 
left  the  impression  but  little  disturbed. 

Anna  Petrovna  determined  to  cure  her 
by  kindness,  so  she  said,  "  Well,  you  shall 
go  next  week.  But  to-day  we  expect  our 
cousin  Vladimir  Alexeitch  Plutitzin  on 
a  short  visit.  He  is  musical,  and  I  can- 
not  afford  to  part  with  you  while  he  is 
here." 

Then  Daria's  heart  bounded  with  de- 
light. She  had  tried  to  go  away,  but 
was  forcibly  detained  in  paradise. 

Vladimir  Alexeitch  Plutitzin  arrived — 
a  keen,  dark  gentleman,  forty  years  old, 
and  a  thorough  man  of  the  world ;  a 
gamester  and  a  roue,  bully  or  parasite, 
whichever  suited  his  purpose;  but  most 
agreeable  on  the-  surface,  and  welcome  to 
Madame  Staropolsky  on  that  account  and 
his  relationship.  He  seemed  so  shallow 
she  had  never  taken  the  trouble  to  look 
into  him. 

His  principal  object  in  this  visit  was  to 
borrow  money,  and  as  he  could  not  do  that 
all  in  a  moment,  he  looked  forward  to  a 
tedious  visit. 

But  this  fair  singer  made  all  the  differ- 
ence. He  was  charmed  with  her,  and  be- 
gan to  pay  her  attentions  in  the  drollest 
way,  half  spooney,  half  condescending. 
He  was  very  pertinacious,  and  Daria  was 
rather  offended,  and  a  little  disgusted.  But 


TIT  FOR    TAT. 


95 


all  she  showed  was  complete  coolness  and 
civil  apathy. 

Vladimir  Alexeitch,  having  plenty  of 
vanity  and  experience,  did  not  accept  this 
as  Ivan  did.  "This  cucumber  is  in  love 
with  somebodjV  said  he;  and  he  looked 
out  very  sharp.  He  saw  at  once  that 
Alexis  was  wrapped  up  in  her,  but  that 
she  was  rather  shy  of  him,  and  on  her 
guard.  That  puzzled  him  a  little.  How- 
ever, one  Sunday  he  detected  her  talking 
with  a  young  man  under  the  front  veranda. 
It  was  not  love-making  after  the  manner 
of  Vladimir  Alexeitch,  but  they  seemed 
familiar  and  confidential :  clearly  he  was 
the  man. 

Vladimir  burned  with  spite;  and  he 
wreaked  it.  He  went  into  the  drawing- 
room,  and  there  he  found  Alexis  and  his 
mother  seated  apart.  So  he  began  upon 
Alexis.  He  said  to  him,  too  low  for  his 
mother  to  hear,  "  So  our  cantatrice  has  a 
lover. " 

Alexis  stared,  then  changed  color. 
"Daria  a  lover — who?"  He  thought  at 
first  his  own  passion  had  been  discovered 
by  this  shrewd  person. 

"  Oh,  that  is  more  than  I  can  tell  you. 
Some  fellow  of  her  own  class,  though. 
He  is  courting  her  at  this  moment." 

Alexis  turned  ashy  pale,  and  his  lips 
blue.  "I'll  believe  that  when  I  see  it," 
said  he,  stoutly. 

"See  it,  then,  in  the  veranda,"  was  the 
calm  reply. 

With  that  the  serpent  glided  on  to  the 
mother. 

Alexis  waited  a  moment,  and  then 
sauntered  out,  with  a  ghastly  attempt 
at  indifference. 

Once  in  the  hall,  he  darted  to  the  door, 
opened  it,  and  found  Daria  and  her  faith- 
ful Ivan  in  calm  conversation.  The  sight 
of  the  young  man  was  enough  for  Alexis. 
He  said,  angrily,  "  Daria,  my  mother 
wants  you  immediately." 

"Farewell,  then,  Ivan,"  said  Daria,  sub- 
missively, and  entered  the  house  at  once. 
Alexis  stood  and  cast  a  haughty  stare  on 
Ivan ;  and  the  poor  fellow,  who  had  walked 
ten  miles  for  a  word  or  two  with  Daria, 
returned  disappointed. 


CHAPTER   II. 

Meantime  Anna  Petrovna  asked  Vladi- 
mir Alexeitch  what  he  had  said  to  Alexis. 
"  Oh,  nothing  particular;  only  that  our  fair 
cantatrice  had  a  lover." 

"  Why,  that  is  no  news,"  said  the  lady. 
"  But  indeed  he  is  not  much  of  a  lover,  and 
I  hope  it  will  come  to  nothing.  That  is 
very  selfish,  for  he  is  an  old  friend  and  a 
faithful  one  to  her.  His  mother  kept  the 
district  school  at  Griasansk,  and  taught 
Daria  to  read  and  write  and  work.  Her 
son  is  a  notary's  clerk,  and  assisted  her 
in  her  learning.  Let  me  tell  you  she  is  a 
very  fair  scholar,  not  an  ignorant  savage 
like  the  rest  of  these  girls.  To  be  sure  her 
father  has  a  head  on  his  shoulders,  and 
had  sent  her  to  school,  contrary  to  the 
custom  of  the  country." 

That  favorite  topic  of  hers,  the  praises 
of  her  protegee,  was  cut  unnaturally  short 
by  Daria  in  person.  She  came  in,  and 
gliding  up  to  her  patroness  with  a  sweet 
inclination  of  her  whole  body,  said,  "You 
sent  for  me,  Anna  Petrovna.  Alexis  Pav- 
lovitch  told  me." 

"  Indeed !  Then  he  divined  my  thought. 
But  I  did  not  send  for  you ;  I  heard  your 
friend  was  with  you." 

"  He  was." 

"What  have  you  done  with  him?" 

"  I  told  him  to  go." 

"  That  you  might  come  to  me?" 

"Certainly." 

"That  was  rather  hard  upon  him." 

"It  does  not  matter,"  said  Daria,  com- 
posedly. 

"Not  to  you,  Daria;  that  is  evident." 

Alexis  came  in,  and  flung  himself  into 
a  chair,  manifestly  discomposed.  Daria 
cast  a  swift  glance  at  him,  then  looked 
down. 

Anna  Petrovna  surprised  this  lightning 
glance  and  looked  at  her  son,  and  then  at 
Vladimir ;  then  she  turned  her  eyes  inward, 
mystified  and  inquiring,  and  from  that  hour 
seemed  to  brood  occasionally,  and  her  feat- 
ures to  stiffen. 

Vladimir  watched  his  poison  work. 
Some  days  afterward  he  joked  Alexis 
about   his   passion    for    a    girl   who   was 


96 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


already  provided  with  a  lover,  but  found 
hini  inaccessible  to  jealousy.  The  truth 
is,  he  and  Daria  had  come  to  an  explana- 
tion. "  She  loves  nobody  but  rue,"  said  the 
young  man,  proudl}-;  "and  no  other  man 
but  me  shall  ever  have  her;  not  even  you, 
my  clever  cousin." 

"  Oh,  I  make  way  for  the  head  of  the 
house,  as  in  duty  bound,"  said  sneering 
Vladimir.  "  But  when  you  have  got  her 
all  to  yourself,  what  do  you  mean  to  do 
with  her?  I  am  afraid,  Alexis,  she  will 
get  you  into  trouble.  Her  people  are  re- 
spectable. Your  mother's  morals  are  se- 
vere. She  is  attached  to  the  girl.  What 
on  earth  can  you  do  with  her?" 

"  I  mean  to  marrj-  her,  if  she  will  have 
rue." 

"Do  what?" 

"  Marry  her,  man.  What  else  can  I 
do?" 

Vladimir  was  incredulous,  and  amused 
at  first;  then  taking  a  surve3rof  the  young 
man's  face,  he  saw  then-  the  iron  resolu- 
tion that  he  had  observed  in  the  boy's 
mother.  He  looked  aghast.  Alexis  marry 
this  blooming  peasant — a  woman  of  another 
race,  a  child  of  nature  I  She  would  till  that 
sterile  house  with  children,  and  he  would 
die  the  beggar  thai  he  was.  Vladimir  did 
not  speak  all  at  once.  At  last  In'  said, 
"You  cannot;  you  are  not  of  age." 

"I  shall  be  soon." 

"Your  mother  would  never  consent." 

"  I  fear  not. " 

"Well,  then—" 

"  I  shall  marry  Daria." 

When  Alexis  said  this,  and  looked  him 
full  in  the  face,  Vladimir  turned  his  cold, 
pale,  Tartar  eye  away,  and  desperate 
thoughts  flashed  across  him.  Indeed  he 
felt  capable  of  assassination.  But  pru- 
dence and  the  cunning  of  his  breed  sug- 
gested crafty  measures  first. 

He  controlled  himself  with  a  powerful 
effort,  and  said  quietly,  "Such  a  marriage 
would  break  your  mother's  heart;  and  she 
has  been  a  good  friend  to  me.  I  cannot 
abet  you  in  it.  But  I  am  sorry  I  treated 
a  serious  matter  with  levity." 

Then  he  left  him,  and  his  brain  went  to 
work  in  earnest. 


The  truth  is  that  a  more  dangerous  man 
than  Vladimir  Alexeitch  Plutitziu  never 
entered  an  honest  house.  Craftj'  and  self- 
ish by  nature,  he  was  also  by  this  time 
practically  versed  in  wiles;  and  his  great 
expectations,  should  Alexis  die  without 
issue,  and  his  present  ruin,  made  him 
think  little  of  crime,  though  not  of  detec- 
tion. 

lli'  was  too  cunning  to  go  and  tell  Anna 
Petrovna  all  at  once  and  so  reveal  the  mis- 
chief-maker to  Alexis.  He  was  silent  days 
and  days,  but  went  into  brown  studies  be- 
fore Anna  Petrovna,  to  attract  her  atten- 
tion. He  succeeded.  She  began  to  watch 
him  as  well  as  her  son ;  and  at  last  she  said 
to  him  one  day,  "There  is  something  mys- 
terious going  on  in  this  house,  Vladimir." 

"Ah,  you  have  discovered  it?" 

"Ihave  discovered  there  is  something. 
What  is  it,  if  you  please?" 

"  I  do  not  like  to  tell  you;  and  yet  I 
ought,  for  yon  have  been  a  u,-. nul  friend  to 
nu',  and  if  I  do  not  warn  you,  you  will 
perhaps  doubt  my  regard.  I  don't  know 
what  to  do." 

"Shall  I  help  you?     Alexis  and  Daria!" 

"There,  then,  you  have  seen  it." 

"  I  see  he  is  extasie  with  her,  and  no 
wonder,  since  I  am.  Luckily  she  has  too 
much  good  sense." 

"Anna  Petrovna,  my  dear  kinswoman 
and  benefactress,  it  is  my  duty  to  unde- 
ceive you.  She  is  more  timid  and  more 
discreet,  because  she  is  a  woman;  but  she 
is  j 1 1  —  i  as  much  in  love.  It  is  a  passionate 
attachment  on  both  sides,  and — how  shall 
I  tell  j'ou? — marriage  is  to  be  the  end  of 
it!" 

"  Marriage!     My  son — and  my  serf!" 

"  Serfs  exist  no  more.  We  are  all  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  thanks  to  God  and  the 
czar." 

Anna  Petrovna  turned  pale  and  her  feat- 
ures hard  as  iron.  "Viper,"  said  she,  not 
violently,  but  sadly.  Then  her  breath  came 
short,  and  she  could  not  speak. 

But  after  a  little  while  this  just  woman 
half  recanted.  "No,"  said  she,  "I  had  no 
right  to  say  that.  She  sought  me  not;  I 
brought  her  into  this  house,  and  she  was 
a  treasure  to  me.     I  brought  him  into  the 


TIT  FOR    TAT. 


97 


house,  and  she  saw  her  danger  and  asked 
leave  to  go.  But  J,  who  ought  to  have 
been  wiser  than  she,  had  no  forethought. 
I  have  made  my  own  trouble,  and  it  is  for 
me  to  meud  it.  There  shall  be  no  discus- 
sion on  this  subject.  You  must  not  let 
Alexis  know  you  have  spoken  to  me,  nor 
shall  I  speak  to  him." 

Vladimir  consented  eagerly.  It  was  not 
his  game  to  quarrel  with  Alexis. 

That  very  afternoon  Madame  Staropolsky 
said  to  Daria,  "  Daria,  my  little  soul,  you 
were  right  and  I  was  wrong;  you  shall 
visit  your  father  this  afternoon." 

Daria  turned  red  and  white  by  turns, 
and  acquiesced,  trembling  at  what  this 
might  mean.  Two  maids  were  sent  to 
assist  her  in  packing.  That  gave  her  no 
chance  of  delay. 

In  one  hour  a  large  sledge  came  round, 
filled  with  presents  for  her  father.  Anna 
Petrovna  blessed  her  fervently,  but  with 
a  feminine  distinction  kissed  her  coldly, 
enveloped  her  in  rich  furs,  and  packed  her 
off  sans  ceremonie.  She  dashed  over  the 
hard  snow  for  a  mile  or  two,  then  through 
the  village,  sore  envied,  and  followed  by 
each  cur,  and  at  last  landed  triumphantly 
at  her  own  farm  and  her  father's,  warmly 
welcomed,  admired,  and  barked  after;  only 
the  tears  trickled  down  her  cheeks  from 
the  door  she  quitted  to  the  door  she 
reached. 

That  evening  the  house  looked  blank. 
Everybody  missed  Daria,  and  Alexis  kept 
looking  at  the  door  for  her.  At  last  he 
asked,  with  indifference  ill  feigned,  what 
had  become  of  her. 

"Oh,"  said  his  mother,  "she  has  gone 
home.  She  wished  to  go  last  month,  but 
I  detained  her.  I  wished  you  so  to  hear 
her  sing." 

She  then  turned  the  conversation  adroit- 
ly and  resolutely. 

But  Alexis  as  resolutely  declined  to  utter 
anything  but  monosyllables.  He  could  con- 
ceal neither  his  anger  nor  hisunhappiness. 
He  avoided  the  house,  except  at  meals, 
yawned  in  Vladimir's  face,  and  even  in 
his  mother's,  and  once,  when  she  asked, 
tenderly,  why  he  was  so  dull,  replied  that 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


the  house  had  lost  its  sunsnine  and  its 
music. 

This  was  a  cruel  stab  to  Anna  Petrovna. 
She  replied,  grimly,  "  Then  we  will  go  to 
Petersburg  earlier  than  usual,  dear." 

One  day  he  cleared  up  and  became  as 
charming  as  ever. 

Anna  Petrovna,  whose  mother's  heart 
had  yearned  for  him,  was  comforted,  and 
said  to  Vladimir,  "  Ah,  youth  soon  forgets. 
Dear  Alexis  has  come 'to  his  senses  and  re- 
covered his  spirits." 

"So  I  see,"  was  the  reply.  "But  I  do 
not  interpret  that  as  you  do.  I  take  it  for 
granted  he  sees  the  girl  every  day." 

"  What !  "  said  Madame  Staropolsky, 
"under  her  father's  roof?  He  would  not 
wrong  me  so,  after  all  I  have  done  for  him. 
But  I  should  like  to  know." 

Artful  Vladimir  took  her  hand  tenderly. 
"  I  don't  like  spying  on  Alexis,  but  you 
have  a  right  to  know,  and  you  shall 
know." 

She  pressed  his  hand  grateful]}',  then  left 
him,  with  a  deep  maternal  sigh. 

In  a  few  days  he  made  her  his  report. 
Alexis  rode  straight  to  the  farm  every 
day,  and  spent  hours  with  Daria.  Her 
father  encouraged  him,  and  indeed  ordered 
the  girl  to  receive  him  as  her  betrothed 
lover. 

The  mother's  features  set  themselves  like 
iron,  but  she  uttered  no  impatient  word  this 
time.  She  just  directed  her  servants  to  pack 
for  Petersburg. 

When  Alexis  heard  this  he  said  he  should 
prefer  to  stay  behind  until  the  full  summer. 

"No,  my  son,  "said  Madame  Staropolsky 
calmly;  "you  must  not  abandon  me  alto- 
gether. If  I  have  lost  your  affection,  I 
retain  my  authority." 

"So  be  it;  I  must  obey,"  said  he,  dog- 
gedly. "  I  am  not  of  age.  I  shall  be  soon, 
though,  thank  Heaven." 

The  iron  pierced  through  the  mother's 
heart.  She  winced,  but  she  did  not  deign 
to  speak. 

That  evening  Alexis  did  not  come  home 
to  dinner.  He  arrived  about  ten  o'clock, 
with  his  eyes  red  and  swollen,  would  take 
nothing  but  a  glass  of  tea,  and  so  to  bed. 

At  the  sight  of  his  inoffensive  sorrow  the 

"4 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


mother's  bowels  began  to  yearn  over  her 
son.  "Oh,  my  friend,"  said  she  to  her 
worst  enemy,  "  what  shall  I  do?  He  will 
not  live  long."  Vladimir  pricked  up  his 
ears  at  that.  "  Aneurism  of  the  heart — very 
slight  at  present,  but  progressive.  Win- 
poison  his  short  life?  She  is  virtuous.  It 
is  only  her  birth.   I  am  a  miserable  mother. " 

Her  crafty  counselor  trembled,  but  his 
cunning  did  not  desert  him. 

"  And  I  can't  bear  to  see  you  weep,"  said 
he.  "Yes,  try  the  capital  and  its  female 
attractions,  and  if  they  fail,  let  him  marry 
his  enfranchised  serf  and  found  a  plebeian 
line.  I  would  rather  endure  that  shame 
than  see  you  and  him  really  unhappy.  But 
if  you  <m\y  knew  how  many  of  these  un- 
fortunate attachments  I  have  seen  cured, 
and  the  patient  begin  by  bating  and  end 
by  thanking  his  physician!" 

"We  will  go  tu  Petersburg  to-morrow," 
said  the  lady,  firmly. 

They  made  the  journey  accordingly. 
They  took  a  house  on  the  Krestoffsky 
Island,  and  by  advice  of  Vladimir  fur- 
nished both  Alexis  and  himself  with  large 
funds,  aided  by  which  this  mentor  set  him- 
self to  corrupt  bis  pupil. 

Everything  is  to  be  bought  in  capitals, 
and  the  Russian  capital  contained  women 
of  good  position  who  were  easily  tempted 
to  feign  attachment  to  this  Adonis,  and 
cajole  him  with  superlative  art,  which,  by 
the  way,  in  one  case  became  nature  through 
the  lovely  baroness  falling  really  in  love 
with  him.  With  the  assistance  of  these 
charmers,  and  constant  letters  from  Daria, 
which  he  took  the  precaution  to  receive  at 
a  post-office,  and  post  his  own  letters  with 
his  own  hand,  he  passed  three  months 
rather  gayly.  He  saw  he  was  being  cun- 
ningly dealt  with,  and  being  a  Sclav  him- 
self, he  kept  demanding  money  for  his 
pleasures  and  certain  imaginary  debts  of 
honor,  and  hoarding  it  for  a  virtuous  and 
imprudent  purpose. 

As  for  Vladimir,  he  became  easy  about 
his  pupil,  and  pushed  his  own  interests 
with  the  aid  of  his  grateful  patroness. 
Her  vast  lands  and  her  economy  had 
made  her  prodigiously  rich,  and  by  con- 
sequence powerful,   and,  with  her  influ- 


ence and  the  money  she  furnished,  Vladi- 
mir got  the  promise  of  a  police  mastership 
in  a  town  and  district  about  seventy  miles 
distant  from  Smirnovo. 

But  all  of  a  sudden  his  complacency  and 
the  tranquillity  of  his  patroness  received  a 
shock.  Alexis  disappeared,  in  spite  of  all 
the  money  invested  to  cure  him  of  a  vir- 
tuous attachment  by  pleasure,  folly,  and 
a  little  vice,  if  the  good  work  could  not  be 
achieved  without  it.  For  some  days  he 
was  sought  high  and  low  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  the  police  reaped  a  harvest  be- 
fore they  found  out,  or  at  all  events  before 
they  revealed,  that  he  had  hired  a  travel- 
ing carriage,  taken  a  perm  is  de  voyage, 
and  gone  south  post-haste. 

Anna  Petrovna  burled  Vladimir  after 
him,  and  Vladimir,  whoso  appointment 
was  just  signed,  donned  a  uniform,  and 
when  he  left  the  railway  demanded  post- 
horses  anywhere  in  the  name  of  the  law, 
and  achieved  the  journey  to  Smirnovo 
faster  even   than   Alexis. 

He  dashed  up  to  the  door  of  the  house, 
ll  flew  open,  as  usual,  without  knock  or 
ring. 

"  Alexis  Pavlovitch?" 

"  Not  here." 

"  Has  he  not  been  here?" 

"  Fes,  slept  here  one  night  about  two 
days  ago." 

Vladimir  made  no  noise,  but  into  his 
carriage  again,  and  away  to  Daria's  cot- 
tage. 

Empty,  all  but  an  old  woman  as  deaf  as 
a  post,  and  put  in  charge  for  no  other 
reason. 

From  her  he  could  get  nothing;  from  the 
neighbors  only  this,  that  the  old  man  and 
his  daughter  and  Alexis  had  set  forth  on 
a  journey,  and  neither  they  nor  the  troika 
nor  the  horses  had  been  heard  of  since. 

Plutitzin  returned  crest-fallen  to  head- 
quarters, wrote  to  Anna  Petrovna,  and 
then  went  to  bed  for  twenty-four  hours. 

Next  day  he  put  on  his  uniform,  gal- 
loped about  the  country,  and  tried  to 
learn  the  direction  those  three  fugitives 
had  taken. 

He  cajoled,  he  threatened.  "  They  mean 
marriage,"   said  he,   "and  the  man  is  a 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


minor.  His  marriage  will  be  annulled, 
and  all  who  have  aided  and  abetted  him 
sent  to  Siberia." 

The  simple  country  folk  swallowed  this 
brag,  coming  out  of  a  uniform.  They 
trembled  and  offered  conjectures,  having 
no  facts ;  and  then  he  swore  at  them  and 
galloped  elsewhere.  But  when  he  had 
ridden  two  horses  lame,  it  struck  him  all 
of  a  sudden  that  he  was  acting  like  a  fool. 
Why  hunt  these  culprits  in  the  neighbor- 
hood they  had  left? 

Within  eighty  miles— a  mere  step  in 
Russia — was  his  new  post,  at  Samara, 
and  all  the  machinery  of  his  office;  here 
he  was  but  a  private  person,  cased  in  an 
irrelevant  uniform. 

That  very  night  he  wrote  to  the  munici- 
pal authorities  of  Samara,  and  let  them 
know  he  should  arrrive  at  his  official  resi- 
dence on  the  morning  of  next  Thursday. 

He  gave  just  time  for  this  missive  to  get 
ahead  of  him,  and  then  started.  But  he 
made  two  days  of  it,  and  inquired  at  all 
the  stages.  Nor  were  these  inquiries  fruit- 
less. 

Thirty  miles  from  home  he  struck  the 
scent  of  the  fugitives,  and  they  seemed 
really  to  have  anticipated  his  track;  but 
then  it  was  nearly  three  weeks  ago. 

At  the  last  stage  before  Samara  he 
donned  his  uniform,  and  a  glorious  mili- 
tary decoration  he  had  obtained  before  he 
left  the  army  of  his  own  accord,  because 
he  was  threatened  with  an  inquiry  based 
on  his  neglect  to  pay  debts  at  cards,  and 
thus  resplendent  he  drew  near  the  scene  of 
his  future  power  and  glory — -stipend  mod- 
erate, money  to  be  obtained  by  bribes  in- 
definite. 

As  he  surmounted  a  rising  ground  three 
miles  from  the  town,  a  peal  of  musical 
church  bells  broke  out — one  of  the  drollest 
and  prettiest  things  in  Russia,  on  account 
of  the  bells  ranging  over  three  octaves,  and 
the  curious  skill  of  the  ringers  in  sometimes 
running  a  series,  sometimes  leaping  off 
treble  lowers  into  profound  wells  of  mel- 
ody. Tinkle,  tinkle,  tinkle,  b-o-m-e. 
Tinkle,  borne,  tinkle,  tinkle,  tinkle,  borne. 

All  this  tintinnabulation  and  boomen 
gratified  Vladimir's  vanity.     With  what 


quick  eyes  had  Adulation  seen  the  coming 
magnate,  and  with  what  watchful  fingers 
rung  him  into  the  town  of  Samara!  so 
Vladimir  read  "the  bells."  He  smiled, 
well  pleased,  and  longed  to  be  there;  but 
he  had  another  rise  to  surmount  first,  and 
as  his  jaded  horses  plodded  up  it,  down 
glided  an  open  caleche,  with  glossy  and 
swift  horses,  and  in  it  sat  Alexis  and 
Daria,  hand  in  hand;  she  with  her  cheek 
all  love  and  blushes  on  his  shoulder;  he 
seated  erect  and  conscious,  her  protector 
and  her  lord. 

The  carriages  passed  each  other  rapidly ; 
but  in  that  moment  Alexis  drew  himself 
higher,  if  possible,  and  his  black  eye 
flashed  a  flame  of  unspeakable  triumph 
on  his  baffled  pursuer. 

Then  there  whirled  through  the  brain  of 
Vladimir  some  such  thoughts  as  these: 
"  Without  her  father — church  bells — that 
look  of  triumph — useless  to  follow  them — 
let  him  have  her — -she  will  keep  him  from 
marrying  till  he  dies— this  marriage  illegal 
— I  will  annul  it  on  the  spot — quietly." 

Revolving  the  details  of  this  villainous 
scheme,  he  entered  the  town  of  Samara. 


CHAPTER   III. 

Vladimir  went  straight  to  the  church. 
The  priest's  office  was  vacant  by  his  recent 
decease.  The  deacon  was  there.  Vladimir 
terrified  the  simple  man;  told  him  he  had 
taken  part  in  an  illegal  act — the  marriage 
of  two  minors,  one  of  them  under  a  false 
name.  The  woman,  a  lady  of  rank;  the 
soi-disant  Alexis  an  enfranchised  serf, 
whose  real  name  was  Kusmin  Petroff. 

"Is  it  possible?"  said  the  dismayed 
deacon.  "  Win',  her  father  attended  the 
ceremony." 

"  Her  father !  Did  he  look  like  a  noble- 
man?" 


JOO 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


"No;  more  like  a  respectable  peasant." 

"Of  course.  It  was  her  rnajor-dorno," 
said  the  unblushing  Vladimir,  "and  it  will 
cost  him  a  trip  to  Siberia;  and  if  you  are 
wise  you  will  endeavor  not  to  accompany 
him."" 

"My  father,"  said  the  poor  man,  "it  all 
seemed  honest ;  they  sojourned  here — more 
than  a  fortnight.  Their  banns  were  pub- 
lished. You  cannot  suspect  me  of  com- 
plicity. I  implore  you  not  to  bring  me 
into  trouble." 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,"  said  the  chief  of  police, 
"all  depends  on  your  present  conduct. 
Noble  families  do  not  love  public  scandal. 
If  you  place  yourself  under  my  orders 
now,  I  dare  say  I  shall  be  able  to  protect 
you." 

These  terms  were  eagerly  accepted. 

"  Now,  then,"  said  this  grim  functionary, 
"is  this  sham  marriage  registered?" 

"Only  on  a  slip  of  paper,  preparatory  to 
my  entering  it  on  the  register." 

"You  will  hand  that  paper  to  me." 

"Here  it  is,  my  father." 

"And  the  book  of  registration." 

"Yes,"  said  the  deacon,  faintly. 

"A  much  higher  authority  than  I  care 
to  name  will  decide  whether  there  shall  be 
a  correct  entry  or  none  at  all.  While  his 
imperial  maj — while  this  grave  matter  is 
under  consideration,  make  all  future  en- 
tries on  loose  paper  pro  tern." 

The  book  was  handed  over  to  the  chief 
policeman,  and  returned  in  three  weeks, 
with  the  remark  that  it  had  been  to  St. 
Petersburg  in  the  interval. 

The  simple  deacon  received  it  with  a 
genuflection.  He  thought  that  it  had 
passed  through  the  sacred  hands  of  the 
father  of  his  people. 

Meantime  Vladimir  wrote  to  Anna 
Petrovna  and  told  her  all,  addressed  the 
letter,  and  burned  it.  He  remembered 
that  she  had  wavered,  and,  besides,  he 
recollected  her  character.  She  was  too 
scrupulous  to  co-operate  with  him  in  his 
sinister  views,  and  indeed  had  not  the 
same  temptation. 

He  wrote  briefly  to  say  that  Alexis  and 
Daria  were  living  together  as  man  and 
wife,  and  it  was  even  reported  that  he  had 


deceived  her  with  a  form  of  marriage;  but 
that  might  be  untrue. 

Anua  Petrovna  wrote  back  to  say  she 
should  return  to  Smirnovo  at  once,  and 
summoned  him  to  her  side,  "for,"  said 
she,   "I  am  alone  in  the  world." 

Instead  of  melting  into  tears  at  the  sad 
words,  Vladimir's  eyes  flashed  with  greed. 
The  other  day  a  pauper,  and  now  all  the 
domain  of  his  powerful  relative  seemed  to 
be  separated  from  him  only  by  one  life, 
and  that  life  not  only  precarious  but 
doomed. 

He  left  his  post  directly,  appointed  a 
substitute,  who  was  to  communicate  with 
him  on  important  occasions,  and  he  was 
at  Smirnovo  to  receive  Anna  Petrovna. 
She  came,  worn  out  with  fatigue  and  the 
struggles  of  her  maternal  heart,  and  next 
day  she  was  seriously  ill.  Physicians  sent 
for — advised  darkened  room— relief  from 
business  and  anxieties — and  poisoned  her 
a  little  with  mild  narcotics. 

Vladimir  now  read  all  her  letters,  and 
replied  to  all  except  two.  These  were 
from  Alexis  and  Daria,  i  utreating  par- 
don, with  a  filial  anxiety,  and  a  loving 
tenderness  that  would  have  melted  the 
mother  at  once.  But  this  domestic  fiend 
suppressed  them,  and  the  young  pair  got 
no  reply  whatever. 

This  marred  in  some  degree  their  short- 
lived happiness.  Still,  they  hoped  all  from 
time,  and  recovering  by  degrees  the  cruel 
rebuff,  they  were  so  happy  that  every  day 
they  blessed  each  other,  and  wondered 
whether  any  other  mortals  had  attained 
such  bliss  on  this  side  heaven. 

Alas!  in  the  midst  of  their  paradise 
Fate  struck  them  down.  Alarming  symp- 
toms attacked  Alexis.  Physicians  were 
sent  for,  one  after  another,  and  all  looked 
grave.  Daria  wrote  wildly  to  his  mother: 
"  He  is  dying.  Come,  if  you  love  him  bet- 
ter than  I  do.  Come,  and  take  him  from 
me  forever.  Only  save  him."  Hope  rose 
and  fell,  then  dwindled  altogether.  Daria 
watched  him  day  and  night,  and  eyed  every 
doctor's  face  so  piteously  that  they  had  not 
the  heart  to  speak  out,  but  their  looks  and 
tones  were  volumes.  At  last  the  greatest 
physician  in  the  empire  came  and  stood 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


101 


with  his  confreres  over  that  sad  bed.  He 
felt  the  patient's  heart,  his  head,  his  limbs. 
He  said  but  one  word: 

"  Moribund  us. " 

Then  he  retired  without  losing  a  moment 
more,  where  science  was  as  vain  as  igno- 
rance. 

Vladimir  did  not  let  Anna  Petrovna  see 
Daria's  letter,  but  he  went  to  her,  and  said, 
with  agitation  real  or  feigned,  "  I  hear 
Alexis  is  ill.  I  must  go  to  him.  I  love 
the  boy.  If  he  is  seriously  ill,  let  me  tell 
him  you  forgive  him.  Do  not  run  a  risk 
of  shortening  his  life." 

The  poor  mother  trembled,  wept,  and 
assented,  and  the  hypocrite  became  dearer 
to  her  than  ever. 

He  started  at  once  for  Petersburg,  and, 
traveling  day  and  night,  soon  reached  the 
pleasant  villa  from  which  Daria's  letter 
was  written. 

Outside  were  pink  sun-blinds,  marble 
pillars  festooned  with  creepers,  and  all 
the  luxuries  of  civilized  existence;  inside, 
the  dire  realities  of  life — the  husband  a 
corpse,  the  wife  raving,  and  both  of  them 
in  their  prime.  That  no  cruel  feature 
might  be  absent,  an  official  stood  there, 
like  an  iron  pillar,  demanding  the  imme- 
diate interment  of  him  who,  according  to 
nature,  had  just  begun  to  live. 

There  was  no  more  temptation  to  be 
cruel.  Vladimir  buried  the  husband,  got 
two  good  professional  nurses  for  the  wife, 
wrote  feeling  letters  to  the  bereaved  mother, 
and  invited  Daria's  father  to  come  to  her 
at  once.  He  even  deceived  himself  into 
believing  he  was  very  sorry  for  all  the 
hearts  that  were  broken  by  this  blow,  and 
that  he  stayed  in  the  capital  to  keep  guard 
over  the  house  of  mourning,  whereas  what 
he  stayed  for  was  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of 
the  capital,  and  get  himself  appointed  by 
the  State  administrator  to  Alexis,  who, 
like  most  that  love  well,  had  died  intestate, 
and  left  his  love  to  battle  for  the  rights  he 
could  have  secured  her  by  a  stroke  of  the 
pen  in  season. 

Alexis  had  drawn  the  rents  of  Staropolsk, 
his  patrimony,  and  there  was  money  in  the 


house;  but  Vladimir  thought  it  wise  to 
connive  at  that,  and  fasten  on  a  larger 
booty.  Though  older  in  years,  he  was 
somehow  heir  at  law  to  Alexis,  and  being 
administrator,  had  only  to  help  himself. 

From  such  a  mind  it  is  a  relief  to  turn  to 
sacred  sorrow.  An  old  man  conveyed  home 
by  easy  stages  a  pale  young  woman  in  a 
full  cap,  worn  to  hide  the  loss,  by  grief  and 
brain-fever,  of  her  lovely  golden  hair.  It 
was  the  broken-hearted  Daria. 

A  mother  bereaved  of  her  only  son  sought 
comfort  in  religion,  and  awaited  her  own 
summons,  with  thanks  to  God  that  she  had 
not  many  years  to  live  alone  in  this  cruel 
world.  This  was  the  brave  Anna  Petrovna. 


CHAPTER     IV. 

In  the  second  mouth  of  her  widowhood 
her  father  told  Daria  she  ought  to  demand 
her  third. 

"  My  third !  "  said  she.  "  I  have  lost 
him,  and  would  you  comfort  me  with  his 
mone}'?"  And  she  burst  into  such  pas- 
sionate weeping  that  the  old  man  promised 
faithfully  not  to  renew  the  subject. 

In  the  fourth  month  of  her  widowhood 
she  came  and  stood  by  her  father  as  he 
was  smoking  a  cigarette,  put  a  hand  light 
as  a  feather  on  his  shoulder,  looked  down 
upon  the  floor,  and  said  in  a  low  but  rather 
firm  voice,  "Yes." 

"Yes,  what?"  asked  the  old  man. 

"You  can  ask  for  our  thirds." 

"Our  thirds?      Why,  I  have  no  claim." 

"No,  not  j'ou;  but — ■" 

"What!  Daria,  my  little  soul.  You 
blush.  Is  it  so?  Never  mind  your  old 
father.  Yes;  well,  then,  now  you  are  a 
woman,  and  your  thirds  you  shall  have, 
the  pair  of  ye,  or  I'm  not  a  man." 

By  this  time  it  was  well  known  that 
Vladimir  inherited  and  administered  the 
estate  of  Alexis  Pavlovitch  Staropolsky, 
deceased;  so  Kyril  Solovieff  wrote  to  him 


102 


WORKS    OP    CHARLES    READE. 


with  Russian  politeness,  hoped  he  was  not 
premature  or  troublesome,  but  the  widow 
of  Alexis  would  be  grateful  if  he  would  let 
her  have  her  third,  or  a  portion  on  account. 

Vladimir,  who  had  not  been  in  a  public 
office  for  nothing,  wrote  a  line  acknowledg- 
ing receipt,  and  saying  the  matter  should 
meet  with  due  consideration. 

And  so  it  did.  He  did  not  like  parting 
with  a  third,  but  he  had  vague  fears  of  a 
public  discussion.  He  felt  inclined  to  write 
back  that  he  could  not  recognize  the  mar- 
riage as  a  legal  one,  but  would  respect  the 
sentiments  of  his  deceased  relative,  and  dis- 
burse  to  her  the  same  sum  as  if  the  marriage 
had  been  legal. 

But  before  he  could  quite  make  up  his 
mind  a  report  reached  him  which,  vague 
as  it  was,  alarmed  him  seriously.  He  in 
stantly  employed  spies;  and  they  soon  let 
him  know  that  Daria  Solovieff  asked  for 
her  thirds  because  she  had  another  to  pro- 
vide tor  —  the  offspring  of  her  beloved 
Alexis. 

This  was  told  him  with  such  circum- 
stance and  detail  as  left  U0  doubt  possible; 
and  so  the  weak  woman,  who  the  other 
day  lay  at  his  mercy,  struck  terror  to  the 
very  bones  of  this  Machiavel;  and  all  the 
better.  It  is  a  comfort  to  find  that  in 
the  scheme  of  nature  the  weak  can  now 
and  then  confound  the  strong  and  cruel. 

War  to  the  knife  now!  This  serf  spawn, 
if  it  lived,  would  inherit  the  lands  of  Staro- 
polsk  and  Smirnovo.  Vladimir  must  not 
by  word  or  deed  admit  the  marriage. 

He  wrote,  and  denied  all  legal  claim,  but 
offered  5,000  rubles  out  of  respect  for  the 
memory  of  Alexis. 

This  was  declined,  and  proceedings  com- 
menced. A  lawyer  got  up  the  case  for 
Daria,   instructed  by  her  father. 

Vladimir  prepared  his  own  case,  and 
spent  money  like  water ;  got  the  deacon  of 
Samara  out  of  the  way  to  a  better  place 
twelve  hundred  miles  off;  had  famous 
counsel  from   St.   Petersburg,   etc. 

The  case  was  tried  in  the  district  court. 
The  defense  was,  "  No  marriage  at  all,  or 
else  illegal  by  minority." 

On  the  question  of  minority  the  defense 
was  upset,  the  Solovieff s  made  a  hit  there : 


they  brought  witnesses  out  of  the  enemy's 
camp — the  nurse  of  Alexis,  who  had  noted 
the  very  hour  of  his  birth,  four  o'clock  in 
the  morning  of  the  9th  of  May,  1846. 

Now  the  witnesses  swore  he  was  married 
9th  of  May,  at  11  A.  M. 

Three  witnesses  who  knew  Alexis  and 
had  seen  him  married  had  been  spirited 
away  for  the  time  by  the  gold  of  Plutitzin. 
Eighteen  natives  of  the  town  gave  second- 
ary evidence — swore  to  the  bride  there 
present,  and  that  the  bridegroom  was  a 
young  man  with  swarthy  complexion  and 
wonderful  black  eyes,  who  passed  for  Alexis 
Pavlovitch  Staropolsky. 

This  evidence  led  up  to  the  direct  testi- 
mony of  old  Kyril  Solovieff,  that  he  had 
driven  Alexis  from  Smirnovo  to  Samara, 
ami  given  him  at  the  altar  his  daughter 
there  present. 

The  last  witness  was  Daria  herself. 
Her  beauty  and  sorrow  and  angelic  can- 
dor, coupled  with  her  situation,  which  was 
now  very  manifest,  and  a  touching  justifi- 
cation of  her  proceedings,  both  in  defense 
of  her  good  name  and  her  other  rights,  won 
every  heart,  aud  indeed  made  every  word 
she  spoke  seem  gospel  truth. 

She  deposed  to  her  adoption  by  Anna 
Petrovna,  her  courtship  by  Alexis,  their 
separation,  his  fidelity,  their  sojourn  in 
Samara,  their  marriage,  their  cohabitation, 
her  refusal  to  take  these  proceedings  until 
she  found  herself  pregnant. 

When  Bhe  was  taken,  sobbing  and  half- 
fainting,  out  of  the  box,  defense  seemed 
impossible.  Many  persons  present  wept, 
and  among  them  was  a  young  lawyer,  who 
never  forgot  that  trial,  never  for  a  moment 
misunderstood  a  single  point  of  it.  It  was 
the  faithful,  forgiving  Ivan  Ulitch  Koscko. 

The  defendant's  counsel  rose  calmly,  and 
alleged  fraud .  He  admitted  the  attachment 
between  Alexis  and  the  plaintiff , and  argued 
that  to  possess  this  beautiful  woman  he  had 
lent  her  his  name,  upon  conditions  which 
she  and  her  friends  never  violated  till  death 
had  closed  his  lips. 

The  person  s*he  had  legally  married  was 
some  tool  bought  for  the  job,  and  to  leave 
the  country  forever,  and  make  way  for  the 
real  possesser  but  fictitious  husband. 


TIT  FOR    TAT. 


103 


Then  they  put  in  the  book  of  registry, 
and,  with  a  certain  calm  contempt,  left 
their  case  entirely  with  the  judge. 

People  stared  and  wondered. 

The  judge  examined  the  book,  and  read 
from  it:  "May  9,  18G6,  married  Kusmin 
Gavrilovitch  Petroff  and  Daria  Kirilovna 
Solovieff,  strangers." 

A  chill  ran  round  the  court. 

The  judge  asked  the  defendant's  counsel 
in  whose  handwriting  this  entry  was. 

"  In  the  same  as  the  rest  apparently." 

"And  who  wrote  the  rest?" 

"We  do  not  know  for  certain." 

"Well,  I  must  know  before  I  admit  it 
against  sworn  witnesses." 

He  retired  to  take  some  refreshment,  and 
on  his  return  they  had  witnesses  to  swear 
that  the  entry  in  question  and  the  notices 
that  preceded  it,  and  thirty-five  per  cent 
that  followed  it,  were  all  in  the  handwrit- 
ing of  the  last  deacon. 

"  Where  is  he?"  asked  the  judge. 

"  He  was  promoted  some  time  ago  to  a 
church  on  the  confines  of  Siberia." 

Then  the  judge  expressed  dissatisfaction 
at  his  not  being  there,  and  thereupon  each 
counsel  blamed  the  other.  The  plaintiff's 
counsel  believed  he  had  been  spirited  away. 
The  defendant's  counsel  said  that  was  an 
unworthy  suspicion ;  the  law  relied  on  the 
book,  not  on  the  writer;  he  in  many  cases 
must  be  absent,  since  in  many  he  was  dead. 
It  was  for  the  other  party,  who  had  the 
book  against  them,  to  call  the  writer  if 
they  dared;  and  being  plaintiff,  they  could 
have  postponed  the  case  until  they  had 
found  him. 

In  this  argument  the  barrister  from  the 
capital  gained  an  advantage  over  the  local 
advocate,  and  the  judge  nodded  assent. 

This  concluded  the  trial,  and  the  judge 
delivered  the  verdict  and  his  reasons  in  a 
very  few  words. 

"This  is  a  strange  case,"  said  he,  "a 
mysterious  case.  There  is  a  conflict  of 
evidence,  all  open  to  objection.  The 
direct  evidence  for  the  plaintiff  is  re- 
spectable, but  interested;  the  evidence 
for  the  defendant  is  a  book,  and  cannot 
be  cross-examined.  But  then  that  book  is 
the  special  evidence  appointed  by  law  to 


decide  these  cases.  It  can  only  be  im- 
pugned by  evidence  of  forgery  or  addi- 
tion, mutilation  or  adulteration'  of  some 
kind  or  other.  It  is  not  so  impugned  in 
this  case;  therefore,  it  binds  me.  The 
verdict  is  for  the  defendant,  the  marriage 
of  the  plaintiff  to  Alexis  Pavlovitch  Staro- 
polsky  being  not  proved  according  to  law, 
and  indeed  rather  disproved." 

Daria's  father  went  home  furious  at  the 
defeat  and  the  loss  of  money.  Daria  shed 
some  patient  tears,  but  bore  the  disappoint- 
ment and  the  wrong  with  fortitude. 

As  the  defeated  ones  drove  out  of  the 
town  in  their  humble  vehicle  they  were 
stopped  by  an  old  friend — Ivan  Ulitch. 
The  meeting  made  them  both  uneasy. 
They  had  dismissed  him  so  curtly,  and 
what  had  they  gained?  The  farmer  even 
expected  an  affront,  or  ironical  sympathy. 
But  Ivan  was  not  of  that  sort.  He  was 
"humble fidelity" in  person.  Affectionate, 
not  passionate,  he  had  obeyed  his  beau- 
tiful friend,  and  left  her  in  prosperity, 
but  in  her  adversity  he  returned  to  her 
directly. 

"Daria,  my  soul,"  said  he,  "do  not  be 
discouraged  by  this  defeat.  It  is  a  fraud 
of  some  sort.  Give  me  time;  I  shall  un- 
ravel it.  I  live  here  now,  and  shall  soon 
be  a  clerk  no  more,  but  a  lawyer  to  defend 
your  rights." 

"Good  Ivan — -kind,  faithful  Ivan!"  said 
Daria,  through  her  tears.  "  What,  are  you 
still  my  friend?" 

"  More  than  ever,  dear  soul,  now  I  see 
you  wronged.  Do  not  lose  heart.  This  de- 
feat is  nothing.  Your  lawyer  was  weak ; 
the  other  side  were  strong  and  unscrupu- 
lous, and  have  fought  with  gold  and  fraud. 
That  is  self-evident,  though  the  fraud  itself 
is  obscure.  No  matter;  I  will  work  like 
a  mole  for  you,  and  unravel  the  knavery." 

Daria  interrupted  him.  "  No,  Ivan 
Ulitch;  that  3*ou  esteem  me  still  is  a 
drop  of  comfort,  welcome  as  water  to 
the  thirsty.     But  no  more  law  for  me." 

And  so  they  parted. 

Ivan,  though  he  seemed  to  acquiesce, 
was  not  to  be  discouraged.  For  months 
and  years  he  patiently  groped  beneath  the 


104 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


surface  of  this  rase,  yet  never  mentioned 
the  case  itself.  He  watched  for  the  return 
of  smuggled  away  witnesses;  he  listened 
in  cafes  and  cabarets;  he  courted  the  priest 
and  the  deacon ;  he  was  artful,  silent,  pa- 
tient, penetrating.  Love  by  degrees  made 
him  as  dangerous  as  greed  had  made  Vladi- 
mir Alexeitch. 

Meantime  that  victorious  villain  hurried 
away  to  his  headquarters,  and  told  Anna 
Petrovna  there  had  been  no  difficulty  after 
all.  The  very  register  of  the  place  had 
shown  that  the  person  Daria  was  really 
married  to  was  a  serf. 

"  1  do  not  doubt  it,'*  said  Anna  Petrovna; 
"but  I  cannot  rejoice  with  you.  Would 
to  God  my  son  had  married  her,  and  not 
died  with  that  crime  on  his  soul!" 

Vladimir  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and 
made  no  reply.  As  for  Anna  Petrovna, 
she  never  recurred  to  the  subject;  and  in- 
deed she  hated  the  very  name  of  Daria 
Solovieff.  She  was  obliged  to  hear  it  now 
and  then;  but  she  never  uttered  it  of  her 
own  accord. 

Daria  became  the  mother  of  a  beautiful 
boy.  and  the  joys  of  maternity  reconciled 
her  to  life.  Youth  and  health  and  mater- 
nal joy  foughl  againsl  grief,  and  in  time 
gave  her  back  all  her  beauty,  with  a  pen- 
sive tenderness  that  elevated  it.  Her  posi- 
tion was  painful;  but  the  country  people 
stood  by  her.  The  women  instinctively 
sided  with  her,  and  laid  all  the  blame  on 
the  pride  of  the  noble-. 

She  called  her  boy  Alexis,  and  he  was 
as  dark  as  she  was  fair.  She  had  him 
well  educated  from  his  very  infancy,  and 
let  everybody  know  that  they  must  treat 
him  like  a  noble,  but  herself  like  a  peasant. 
She  never  went  near  Smirnovo,  nor  did 
Anna  Petrovna  ever  come  her  way.  Yet 
they  often  thought  of  each  other,  and  each 
wondered  how  she  could  have  so  mistaken 
the  other's  character.  Their  friends  did 
not  fail  to  keep  the  mutual  repulsion  alive, 
the  impassable  gulf  open. 

Ivan  visited  the  cottage  from  time  to 
time,  and  was  always  welcome.  One  year 
after  the  birth  of  Alexis,  he  offered  mar- 
riage to  Daria.  She  thanked  him  for  his 
fidelity,   but   calmly   declined.      This    re- 


stricted him  to  one  topic;  and,  to  do  him 
justice,  the  enduring  fellow  did  not  cool 
in  it  one  bit  merely  because  Daria  would 
not  marry  him.  He  remained  just  as  full 
of  the  law  case  and  Plutitzin's  knavery,  to 
whose  influence  he  had  pretty  well  traced 
the  false  entry  in  the  register,  and  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  deacon,  lost  in  that 
boundless  empire,  and  separated  from 
clerical  functions,  otherwise  Ivan  would 
have  discovered  him  by  his  agents. 

But  Ivan's  only  eager  listener  was  the 
old  peasant.  Daria  had  lost  faith  in 
human  tribunals,  and  had  no  personal 
desire  for  wealth.  With  her  the  heart 
predominated  over  the  pocket.  Her  great 
grief  now  was  her  alienation  from  the 
mother  of  Alexis,  her  old  benefactress. 
She  often  said  that  if  any  one  would  only 
confine  her  in  one  prison  with  Anna 
Petrovna,  she  would  regain  her  confi- 
dence  and  her  love.  Put  her  old  patron- 
ess was  physically  inaccessible  to  her — at 
the  capital  nine  months  in  the  year,  and 
shut  up  the  rest;  dragons  at  every  door, 
under  the  chief  dragon  Vladimir,  who  sel- 
dom went  near  his  office,  but  just  cannily 
bribed  everybody  who  objected  to  his  fre- 
quent absences. 

So  rolled  the  years  away,  till  one  day 
Ivan  Ulitch,  now  a  keen  lawyer  in  good 
practice,  came  to  the  cottage,  "bearded 
like  the  pard,"  and  somewhat  changed  in 
manner,  more  authoritative. 

"  The  time  is  come,"  said  he;  "the  plum 
is  ripe." 

Daria  rose  quietly  and  was  about  to  re- 
tire, but  Ivan  requested  her  to  stay. 

She  said  it  was  not  necessary;  her  father 
would  tell  her;  besides,  Alexis  was  calling 
for  her. 

"Then  let  him  come  to  you,"  said  Ivan, 
firmly.  "  It  is  for  him  I  have  been  work- 
ing, as  well  as  for  you.  I  think  I  have  a 
right  to  look  at  him." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Daria,  coloring  up,  and 
brought  the  boy  in,  and  with  her  native 
politeness  said  to  him,  "  Alosha,  this  is  a 
good  friend  to  you  and  me;  shake  hands 
with  him." 

Alexis  shook  hands  directlj-. 

"And  now  sit  quiet,  ruy  dove." 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


105 


Her  dove  sat  quiet,  and  opened  two 
glorious  eyes  on  Ivan  Ulitch. 

"Daria  Kirilovna,"  said  Ivan,  "if  you 
submit  to  that  knave  Plutitzin,  you  let 
him  rob  this  boy  out  of  his  right.  The 
moment  your  marriage  is  established,  he 
is  the  owner  of  Staropolsk  and  the  heir  of 
Anna  Petrovna.  Now  do  you  love  the  son 
of  Alexis  Pavlovitch — great  Heaven !  how 
like  he  is  to  his  father ! — do  you  love  him 
like  a  child  or  like  a  woman?" 

The  poor  thing  held  out  her  arms  to 
Alexis  with  an  inarticulate  cry,  the  sacred 
music  of  a  mother's  heart.  Alexis  ran  to 
her.  She  was  all  over  him  in  a  moment, 
and  nestled  his  head  in  her  bosom,  and 
rocked  a  little  with  him.  "  Do  I  love  my 
heart  and  soul?  Do  I  love  my  pigeon  of 
pigeons?" 

"  I  love  you,  mammy,"  suggested  Alexis. 

"Ay,  my  heart  of  hearts;  but  not  as 
your  mammy  loves  you.  How  could 
you?" 

The  men  said  nothing,  but  their  eyes 
were  moist,  and  Ivan  felt  ashamed  he 
had  said  anything  that  could  be  construed 
into  a  doubt.  He  began  to  stammer  ex- 
cuses. 

"  Nay,  nay,"  said  Daria.  "  I  know  what 
you  meant,  and  I  deserve  it.  The  love  of 
my  precious  has  been  all  /needed.  I  ought 
to  look  forward  to  the  days  when  he  will 
be  a  man,  and  perhaps  ask  why  I  neglected 
his  interests,  and  his  good  name  as  well  as 
mine.  My  faithful  friend,  if  you  are  to 
be  our  lawyer,  I  will  try  once  more— for 
my  Alexis.  I  will  face  that  dreadful 
court  again  for  my  Alexis." 

"Victory!"  cried  Ivan  Ulitch,  starting 
up  and  waving  his  cap. 

Alexis  approved  this  behavior  highly. 
It  was  so  new  in  that  staid  house.  "Vic- 
tory!" he  cried,  and  caught  up  his  pork- 
pie  to  wave  it,  but  was  cut  short,  and 
nearly  smothered  with  kisses. 

"  Here  is  a  change  of  wind,"  said  the  old 
man,  dryly;  "but  excuse  me,  son  Ivan,  it 
is  not  victory  yet.  These  young  women 
they  hang  back  and  pull  against  you,  and 
then  all  in  a  moment  start  cff  full  gallop, 
and  neat-leather  reins  won't  hold  them. 
But  I  must  have  my  word  too.     The  last 


trial  cost  me  all  my  savings  in  one  day. 
Will  this  cost  as  much?" 

"The  double." 

"And  am  I  to  pay  it?" 

"  You  will  not  pay  one  solkov.  I  shall 
pay  it,  and  this  boy's  inheritance  will  re- 
pay it  with  interest." 

"  Good  !  On  these  terms  law  is  a  luxury." 

"  Not  to  me,  if  my  best  friend  is  to  risk 
his  money  for  us,"  said  Daria. 

"That  is  my  business,"  retorted  Ivan 
Ulitch,  curtly. 

Daria  apologized  with  feigned  humility, 
but  made  an  appeal.     "  Now,  father — " 

"Why,  girl,"  said  he,  "the  longer  we 
live,  the  more  we  learn.  He  is  not  the 
calf  he  was  when  he  first  got  tethered  to 
your  petticoats.  He  is  a  ripe  lawyer  now, 
by  all  accounts,  and  as  sharp  as  a  vixen 
with  seven  cubs.  For  all  that,  Mr.  Law- 
yer, I  should  like  to  know  whether  that 
register  book  will  come  against  us." 

"  Of  course  it  will;  it  is  the  pillar  of  the 
defense." 

"  Then  it  will  beat  us  again." 

"I  think  not." 

"  Then  how — " 

Ivan  interrupted  him.  "Kyril  K^-rilo- 
vitch,  you  said  right;  'the  longer  we  live, 
the  more  we  learn.'  Well,  I  have  lived 
long  enough  to  learn  that  in  ticklish  cases 
it  is  best  to  tell  nobody  what  cards  we 
mean  to  play.  The  very  birds  of  the  air 
carry  our  words  to  the  other  side.  I  will 
say  no  more  than  this.  I  have  spies  in  the 
very  home  of  Anna  Petrovna.  At  present 
she  knows  neither  me  nor  Plutitzin.  She 
shall  know  us  both,  and  it  is  not  viy  wit- 
nesses that  the  enemy's  gold  shall  put  out 
of  the  way  during  the  trial.  It  is  I  who 
will  bottle  the  wine,  and  keep  it  in  cellar 
for  use.  All  I  require  of  you  is  not  to 
breathe  to  a  soul  that  we  even  intend  to 
appeal  against  that  judgment.  If  you 
breathe  a  syllable,  you  will  cut  your  own 
throats  and  mine." 

Before  he  left  he  recurred  to  this,  and 
once  more  exacted  a  solemn  promise  of 
secrecy.  This  done,  he  cut  his  visit  short 
and  went  home. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  and  unnecessary 
to  follow  Ivan  Ulitch  Koscko  in  all  his 


100 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


acts.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  now  began 
to  gather  certain  fruits  he  had  been  years 
maturing.  But  one  of  the  things  he  did 
was,  to  the  best  of  my  belief,  new  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  In  the  first  place  it 
was  a  piece  of  knavery  done  by  an  honest 
man.  That  is  unusual,  but  far  from  unique. 
But  then  it  was  done  for  no  personal  gain, 
and  mainly  out  of  love  of  justice,  and  jus- 
tice had  little  chance  of  success  without  the 
help  of  this  injustice.  To  this  singular 
situation  add  the  act  itself  and  its  unique 
details,  and  I  think  you  will  come  to  my 
opinion  that,  old  as  the  world  is,  this  pre. 
cise  thing  was  never  done  upon  its  surface 
before  that  day. 

Well,  then,  Ivan  Ulitch  and  the  new 
deacon  were  bosom  friends,  and  that 
friendship  had  been  planted  years  ago, 
and  sunned  and  watered  and  grown  and 
ripened  for  this  one  day's  work. 

The  deacon  went  a  day's  journey,  leav- 
ing Ivan  some  ecclesiastical  deeds  to  de- 
cipher and  comment  on  in  his  house.  Ivan 
breakfasted  with  him,  and  after  his  de- 
parture showed  the  deacon's  housekeeper 
the  work  he  had  before  him,  and  said: 
"Now,  Tania,  mind  I  am  not  here.  I 
can't  do  such  work  as  this  if  I  am  inter- 
rupted. Do  not  come  near  me  till  three 
o'clock,  nor  let  any  one  else." 

Tatiana,  with  whom  he  was  a  special 
favorite,  promised  faithfully,  and  proved 
a  very  dragon. 

Ivan  took  out  of  his  lawyer's  bag  a  cork- 
screw, various  vials  containing  inks  and 
chemicals,  paper,  numberless  pens,  and 
other  things  not  worth  enumerating,  and 
out  of  his  pockets  magnifiers  set  in  spec- 
tacles, and  things  like  surgeon's  instru- 
ments. 

He  went  to  a  little  book-shelf,  took  out 
a  book,  and  found  a  key;  with  this  key  he 
opened  an  old  oak  chest,  clamped  with  iron, 
and  found  a  book  with  vellum  leaves  and 
a  parchment  cover  brownish  with  age.  It 
was  the  register.  This  book  was  made 
near  a  century  ago  by  a  priest  who  was 
an  enthusiast.  Common  as  skins  are  in 
Russia,  this  use  of  vellum  was  very  rare. 

He  read  several  pages.  He  put  on 
magnifiers,  and  examined  the  fatal  entry; 


then,  without  removing  his  magnifiers,  he 
proceeded  with  his  surgical  instruments 
to  efface  the  name  of  Kusmin  Gavrilovitch 
Petroff.  In  this  work  he  proceeded  with 
singular  gentleness  and  slowness.  He  was 
full  two  hours  effacing  that  one  name. 
Then  he  heated  an  iron  the  size  of  a  wal- 
nut, and,  after  trying  it  on  other  parts  of 
the  book,  ironed  down  his  work  so  that  it 
was  no  longer  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  but 
only  to  a  strong  magnifier. 

Then  with  various  inks  and  various  pens 
he  set  to  work  to  imitate  on  paper  the  hand- 
writing of  the  late  deacon  and  the  words 
Kusmin  Gavrilovitch  Petroff,  for  which  he 
had  previously  searched  when  he  read  the 
other  pages,  and  found  an  example  readily, 
for  it  was  a  common  name. 

When  he  had  mastered  the  imitation,  he 
took  a  hand  magnifier  and  wrote  Kusmin 
Gavrilovitch  Petroff  over  the  place  of  the 
old  signature.  Then  he  put  the  book  in 
the  sun  and  let  his  work  dry.  It  dried  a 
trifle  paler  than  the  rest  of  the  book,  but 
with  a  crow-quill  he  added  the  requisite 
color  here  and  there. 

The  work  was  hardly  finished  when  a 
heavy  knock  at  the  door  made  him  start 
and  tremble. 


CHAPTER  V. 

"  What  is  it?" 

"Five  o'clock,"  replied  the  voice  of 
Tatiana. 

And  he  thought  it  was  about  one. 

He  begged  for  half  an  hour  more,  and 
began  to  tie  up  the  old  papers  with  fingers 
that  trembled  now  for  the  first  time. 

He  put  away  the  register,  locked  the 
chest,  put  the  key  in  its  hiding-place,  un- 
bolted the  door,  and  asked  Tatiana  for  a 
glass  of  brandy. 

She  brought  it  him  directly,  and  said  he 
needed  it. 

"No  matter,"   said   he;    "the    work    is 


TIT  FOR    TAT. 


107 


done."     He  drank   Tatiana's  health,    and 
went  away  gayly. 

Tatiana  went  into  the  room,  and  found 
the  pile  of  old  papers  all  neatly  done  up 
and  tied.  "Musty  old  things!"  said  she. 
"  'Tis  a  shame  a  comely  young  man  like 
that  must  bury  his  nose  in  such  old-world 
muck.  Smells  like  the  grave;  no  wonder 
he  got  pale  over  them,  the  nasty  trash." 

Soon  after  this  Ivan  appeared  at  the  cot- 
tage with  affidavits  to  be  signed  by  Daria 
Kyril,  and  others,  and  in  due  course  moved 
for  a  new  trial  upon  numberless  depositions 
alleging  fraud,  suppression  of  evidence,  in- 
efficient inquiry,  recent  discoveries,  non- 
existence of  an  imaginary  husband  palmed 
upon  the  court,  etc. 

The  notice  of  motion  was  served  on  Anna 
Petrovna  and  Vladimir  Alexeitch.  Anna 
Petrovna  declined  to  move  hand  or  foot. 
Vladimir  opposed  by  powerful  counsel,  but 
the  court  could  not  burke  an  inquiry  sup- 
ported by  such  a  mass  of  affidavits. 

Vladimir,  however,  was  very  successful 
in  another  branch  of  policy.  Even  as 
Fabius  wore  out  Annibal,  he  baffled  the 
plaintiff,   "ad  cunctando  restituit  rem." 

First,  Anna  Petrovna,  whom  he  had  the 
effrontery  to  call  his  leading  witness, though 
he  knew  "  oxen  and  twain  ropes  would  not 
drag  her"  into  court. 

Then  at  the  end  of  three  months  he  was 
ill  himself. 

Then,  just  as  the  trial  was  coming  on, 
he  could  not  find  the  late  deacon.  He  had 
suddenly  disappeared  from  Russia,  and  was 
said  to  be  in  Constantinople. 

And  so  he  sickened  the  adversaries' 
hearts,  and  they  began  to  fear  the  new 
trial  would  not  come  on  in  their  lifetime, 
if  at  all. 

It  was  actually  delayed  eighteen  months 
by  these  acts.  But  Ivan  was  not  idle.  He 
got  the  local  press  to  insert  timid  hints  of 
a  most  important  trial  unreasonably  de- 
layed. He  even  got  a  hint  conveyed  to 
the  president  that  the  right  of  postpone- 
ment was  being  extended  to  a  defeat  of 
justice,  and  at  last  a  sturdy  judge  said: 
"  No.  At  the  last  trial  you  relied  mainly 
on  an  evidence  that  is  easy  of  access.  It 
is  a  sufficient  defense,  and  you  disclose  no 


other.     The  cause  ought  to  be  tried  during 
the  lifetime  of  all  the  parties  interested." 

Then  he  appointed  a  day. 

The  trial  came  on,  with  great  expecta- 
tion, in  the  leading  court  of  Petersburg. 

This  time  there  were  three  judges. 

To  avoid  weariness,  I  shall  confine  my- 
self to  such  features  of  this  trial  as  were 
new. 

At  the  first  trial  Daria  was  dressed  like 
a  lady,  and  was  interesting  by  her  pale 
beauty  and  manifest  pregnancy. 

At  this  trial  she  was  more  beautiful,  but 
dressed  like  a  superior  peasant,  and  her 
lovely  boy  like  a  noble,  in  rich  silk  tunic, 
boots,  and  cap  with  feather.  So  with  a 
woman's  subtlety  did  she  conve}'  that  she 
came  there  for  her  son's  rights,  not  her 
own. 

The  court  was  full  of  ladies,  and  they 
all  found  means  to  telegraph  their  sym- 
pathy, and  keep  up  her  fainting  heart  as 
she  sat  there  with  her  boy's  hand  in  hers. 

As  to  the  evidence,  the  depositions  of  the 
old  witnesses  were  taken  down  by  the  local 
court,  and  merely  read  at  Petersburg.  To 
these  were  now  added  certain  facts,  also 
proved  on  the  spot,  one  being  the  adoption 
by  Anna  Petrovna  of  their  client.  They 
proved  by  many  female  witnesses  her  vir- 
tue from  her  youth,  and  that  she  was  not 
the  woman  to  live  paramour  with  any 
man. 

They  were  more  particular  as  to  the 
banns,  and  proved  by  oral  testimony  of 
several  persons  that  not  Kusmin  Petroff, 
but  Alexis  Staropolsky,  was  cried  in 
church  with  Daria  Solovieff. 

They  then  tried  to  prove  a  negative,  that 
nobody  had  seen  Petroff,  but  one  of  the 
judges  stopped  them.  Said  he,  "It  does 
not  lie  on  you  to  produce  Petroff.  The 
other  side  will  do  that." 

"  We  doubt  it,"  said  the  advocate. 

"Then  all  the  better  for  you, "  said  the 
judge. 

From  Daria  herself  they  elicited  that  no 
man  called  Petroff  had  ever  written  or 
spoken  to  her  either  before  or  after  her 
marriage,  and  that  ten  minutes  after  the 
wedding  she  and  Alexis  had  met  Vladimir 
Alexeitch,  the  real  defendant,  just  outside 


10S 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


the  town,  and  her  husband  and  he  had  ex- 
changed looks  of  defiance. 

They  proved  by  another  witness  the 
arrival  of  Vladimir  in  the  town  about 
half  an  hour  after  the  wedding,  and  that 
he  was  seen  to  go  into  the  church  at  once, 
and  come  out  with  the  deacon. 

Vladimir,  there  present,  began  to  per- 
spire at  every  pore. 

When  the  defendant's  turn  came,  his 
counsel  told  the  court  all  this  had  been 
put  forward  at  the  last  trial,  and  had  been 
met  triumphantly  by  an  obvious  solution, 
viz.,  that  the  late  Alexis  Staropolsky  had 
loved  a  beautiful  woman,  who  had  never 
deviated  from  the  paths  of  virtue  before, 
and  was  only  persuaded  under  cover  of  a 
marriage  ceremony.  At  that  point,  how- 
ever, the  young  noble  had  protected  him- 
self against  a  mesalliance,  and  substituted 
a  convenient  husband,  who  was  to  disap- 
pear, and  did  disappear;  but  the  good 
simple  deacon  had  recorded  all  he  saw 
or  divined — the  real   marriage. 

"A  real  marriage  without  banns,"  sug- 
gested one  of  the  judges. 

"So  it  appears,"  said  counsel,  indiffer- 
ently. "Iain  not  here  to  bind  the  plain- 
tiff to  Petroff,  but  to  detach  her  from 
Staropolsky.  The  register  is  here.  The 
plaintiff  married  Petroff  or  ncfoody.  The 
proof  is  technical,  and  it  is  the  proof  the 
law  demands.  This  court  (iocs  no1  sit  to 
make  the  law,  nor  to  break  the  law,  but 
to  find  the  law." 

"That  is  so."  said  the  president.  "Let 
me  see  the  book." 

The  book  was  handed  up.  The  judges 
examined  it,  and  all  looked  grave. 

Counsel  proceeded  to  prove  the  hand- 
writing, as  before,  by  secondary  evidence. 

One  of  the  judges  objected.  "  This  writ- 
ing is  opposed  to  such  a  weight  of  oral  testi- 
mony that  we  shall  expect  to  see  the  writer 
of  it." 

Counsel  informed  the  court  that  they  had 
hunted  Russia  for  him,  but  could  not  find 
him.  "  For  years  after  this  business  be 
lived  near  Viatka,  but  now  we  have  lost 
sight  of  him.  Had  the  plaintiff  appealed 
in  a  reasonable  time,  we  should  have  had 
the  benefit  of  his  personal  evidence." 


"There  is  something  in  that,"  said  the 
judge.  Another  remarked  that  entries  in 
the  same  handwriting  preceded  and  fol- 
lowed the  entry  in  question.  A  third 
judge  found  another  Petroff  exactly  like 
the  writing  of  the  fatal  Petroff,  and  so, 
after  a  snarl  or  two,  they  excused  the  ab- 
sence of  the  old  deacon. 

Vladimir's  counsel  whispered  him,  "  You 
are  lucky;  the  case  is  won." 

The  judges  retired  to  take  some  refresh- 
ment and  agree  upon  their  judgment. 

They  left  the  register  behind  them.  Ivan 
got  it  from  the  clerk  and  examined  it  care- 
fully.    The '  ither  side  looked  on  sneeringly. 

Ran  moved  his  Gnger  over  the  entry, 
and  whispered,  "It  feels  rough  here." 

"Indeed,"  said  his  counsel.  "Yes,  I 
think  it  does.  Don't  say  anything;  get 
me  a  magnifier." 

Ivan  went  out,  and  soon  found  a  magni- 
fier, having  brought  three  with  him  into 
court  for  this  little  comedy.  Counsel  ap- 
plied it. 

"The  vellum  appears  to  be  scraped  in 
places,"  said  he.  " Now  let  me  see.  We 
will  flatter  the  president."    Just  then  the 

judges  entered,  and  this  foxy  counsel  said, 

respectfully,  "We  have  found  something 

rather  curious  in  this  entry;  but  my  eyes 
are  not  so  good  as  your  excellency's.  Would 
you  object  to  examine  it  with  a  magnifier?" 

The  judge  nodded  assent.  The  book  and 
magnifier  were  handed  up  to  him.  He  ex- 
amined them  carefully,  and  said  that  ho 
thought  some  name  had  been  erased  and 
another  written  over  it. 

At  that  there  was  an  excited  murmur. 

"But,'*  said  he,  "we  must  take  evidence, 
for  this  is  a  serious  matter.  You  must  call 
experts.  And  you,  please  call  experts  on 
your  side,  for  they  seldom  agree. " 

The  trial  was  postponed  an  hour,  and 
the  court  seemed  invaded  with  bees. 

Ivan  got  experts,  and  sat  quaking  and 
wondering  how  much  experts  really  knew. 
"  We  suspect  erasure,"  said  he,  to  guide 
them. 

In  the  box  those  two  saw  erasure  of  some 
word  previous  to  the  writing  of  Petroff. 
But  the}-  could  not  say  what  word  it  was. 
Did  not  think  it  was  Petroff. 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


109 


The  other  two  saw  erasures,  or  else  scrap- 
ing, but  thought  it  was  rather  the  light 
scraping  of  vellum  that  is  sometimes  done 
to  get  rid  of  the  grease,  etc.,  and  make  a 
better  signature.  But  agreed  with  the 
others  that  the  words  were  written  over 
the  scraping. 

One  of  the  plaintiff's  experts  was  recalled 
and  asked  his  opinion  of  that  evidence. 

Said  he,  "  I  was  surprised  at  it,  because 
in  preparing  parchment  for  writing  nobody 
scrapes  in  the  form  of  the  coming  signa- 
ture; one  scrapes  a  straight  strip." 

Here  the  judge  interposed  his  good  sense. 
"Look  through  the  book,"  said  he,  "and 
tell  me  in  how  many  places  the  vellum 
has  been  scraped  before  writing." 

He  looked  and  could  not  find  one  but 
this  entry. 

They  battled  over  it  to  and  fro,  and  at 
last  one  of  the  experts  swore  that  Daria'a 
name  and  Petroff's  were  not  written  with 
exactly  the  same  ink;  more  gum  in  the 
latter. 

After  a  long  battle  of  experts  the  judges 
compared  notes,  and  the  president  delivered 
judgment. 

"  This  is  the  case  of  Substance  v .  Shadow. 
Here  is  a  weight  of  evidence  to  prove  that 
the  plaintiff  is  a  virtuous  woman,  adopted 
for  her  superior  qualities  by  the  mother  of 
the  deceased,  and  that  mother,  described 
before  the  trial  as  a  leading  witness,  does 
not  appear  to  contradict  her  on  oath.  The 
plaintiff  and  Alexis  Staropolsky  are  traced 
to  Samara,  seen  there  as  lovers  by  many ; 
their  banns  are  called,  and  they  are  accom- 
panied to  church  by  living  witnesses.  They 
go  from  the  church  door  and  meet  the  de- 
fendant, who  dares  not  enter  the  witness- 
box  and  deny  this.  They  cohabit,  and  a 
son  is  born,  but  the  husband  dies.  This 
calamity  is  taken  advantage  of  to  defeat 
the  right  with  shadows.  The  first  shadow 
is  Kusmin  Gavrilovitch  Petroff ;  he  is  never 
seen  to  enter  the  church  door  or  leave  it. 
If  he  was  present  at  the  ceremony,  he  came 
in  at  the  window,  departed  out  of  the  win- 
dow, and  vanished  into  space.  But  more 
probably  he  is  a  nom  de  plume.  A  certain 
deacon  erased  some  other  name,  and  then 
wrote  over  the  vacancy  this  nom  de  plume, 


and  then  made  himself  a  shadow.  We 
need  not  go  into  conjectures  as  to  what 
name  was  originally  written  in  that  regis- 
trj'.  That  might  be  necessary  under  other 
circumstances,  but  here  there  is  a  chain  of 
evidence  of  living  witnesses  to  prove  the 
marriage  of  Dana  Kirilovna  Solovieff  and 
Alexis  Pavlovitch  Staropolsky.  It  is  en- 
countered by  no  man  and  no  thing,  but  a 
mutilated  book  recording  a  nom  de  plume 
upon  an  erasure.  The  judgment  must  be 
for  the  plaintiff.  The  marriage  was  legal, 
and  her  son  is  legitimate.  Their  material 
rights  will  no  doubt  be  protected  in  another 
court  upon  due  application." 

The  people  rose,  the  ladies  waved  their 
handkerchiefs  to  Daria  and  her  beautiful 
boy,  and  he  actually  kissed  his  hand  to 
them  with  the  instinct  of  his  race. 

Out  of  court  there  was  a  joyful  meeting, 
and  Daria  actually  took  Ivan  by  the  should- 
ers and  kissed  him  on  both  cheeks.  But 
she  was  away  again  so  quick  that  the  en- 
raptured but  modest  lover  never  kissed  her 
in  return,  he  was  so  taken  by  surprise. 
However,  he  remembered  the  gentle  on- 
slaught with  rapture.  He  sent  her  home 
with  certain  instructions.  He  remained 
to  do  her  business.  The  case  was  re- 
ported, and  he  sent  six  copies  of  journals 
to  the  house  of  Anna  Petrovna.  One  of 
the  two  copies  sent  to  herself  was  in  a 
light  parcel  surrounded  by  lace,  for  he 
felt  sure  Vladimir  had  taken  measures  to 
intercept  information  of  any  kind. 

He  then  moved  the  Orphan  Court  to 
attach  the  separate  estate  of  Alexis,  de- 
ceased, give  the  widow  her  third,  and  put 
the  rest  in  trust  for  Alexis  junior. 

The  other  party,  however,  asked  a  brief 
delay  to  argue  this,  and  meantime  gave 
notice  of  appeal  to  the  Senate  on  the  ques- 
tion of  marriage  and  legitimacy. 

Vladimir  wrote  to  Anna  Petrovna,  bid- 
ding her  be  under  no  anxiety  as  to  the 
final  result.  They  should  accuse  the  other 
side  of  tampering  with  the  register. 

However,  when  this  letter  reached  her, 
Anna  Petrovna  was  another  woman.  The 
journals  directed  to  her  house  were  inter- 
cepted, but  the  parcel  of  lace  reached  her, 
and  inside  it  was  the  report,  and  this  line: 


110 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


"  Sent  in  this  form  because  important  com- 
munications to  you  have  been  constantly 
intercepted  since  you  put  yourself  in  tiie 
power  of  your  son's  worst  enemy." 

"Can  this  be  so?"  said  Madame  Staro- 
polsky.  "  No,  it  is  a  calumny.  I  will  not 
read  this  paper."     She  tossed  it  from  her. 

On  second  thoughts  she  would  read  it, 
out  of  curiosity,  just  to  see  by  what  arts 
these  people  had  deceived  the  judges. 

She  read  the  report  word  for  word,  read 
it  with  carefully  nursed  prejudice  fight- 
ing against  native  justice  and  good  sense, 
and  a  sort  of  chill  came  over  her.  She  had 
resigned  her  intelligence  to  Vladimir  for 
seven  years.     Now  she  began  to  resume  it. 

"Oh,  foolish  woman,"  she  said,  "to  go 
on  year  after  year  hearing  but  one  side  in 
such  a  case  as  this!  Virtuous!  Yes,  she 
was:  and  he  impetuous  and  willful.  How 
often  have  these  two  tilings  led  to  a  mes- 
alliance?" 

She  went  over  all  the  points  of  the  judg- 
ment, and  could  not  gainsay  them. 

She  sat  all  day  and  brooded  over  the 
past,  and  digested  the  matter,  and  wa 
perplexed.  Next  day,  while  she  was  brood- 
ing, the  old  nurse  of  the  family,  whom 
Vladimir  had  been  unable  to  corrupt,  put 
into  her  hands  a  note. 

"From  whom?"  she  asked. 

"From  one  who  loves  you,  my  heart's 
soul." 

"Ah!  What,  has  she  bewitched  thee?" 
She  opened  the  note  with  compressed  lips, 
but  hands  that  trembled  a  little. 

"  Anna  Petrovna — How  can  we  de- 
ceive you?  You  have  eyes  and  ears,  and 
more  wisdom  than  the  judges;  pray,  pray 
let  us  come  to  your  feet  for  judgment.  I 
will  abandon  all  my  rights  if  you  look  us 
in  the  face  and  bid  me.  Daeia." 

"  The  witch !"  said  Madame  Petrovna, 
trembling  a  little.  "  She  thinks  I  cannot 
resist  her  voice.  And  can  I?  Ay,  nurse, 
she  will  abandon  her  rights,  but  not  her 
son's." 

"  Can  you  blame  her,  my  heart?" 
"No,"  said  the  lady,  with  a  blunt  hon- 
esty all  her  own. 


Then  she  sat  down  and  wrote,  with  her 
most  austere  face:  "Come,  if  you  have 
the  courage  to  meet  the  mother  of  Alexis." 

She  sent  the  nurse  off  with  this  in  a  fast 
troika ;  and  when  the  nurse  was  gone,  she 
regretted  it.  Daria  was  a  woman  now,  and 
a  mother  defending  her  child.  What  chance 
would  the  truth  have  if  she  resisted  it  with 
that  voice  of  hers  and  all  a  mother's  art? 

Then  again  she  thought:  "No,  I  have 
my  eyes  as  well  as  my  ears,  and  I  am  a 
mother  too.     She  cannot  deceive  me." 

Some  hours  passed,  and  the  carriage  did 
not  return. 

Then  she  said:  "I  thought  not.  It  was 
bravado.     She  is  afraid  to  come." 

Then  she  began  to  he  sorry  Daria  was 
afraid  to  come. 

Meantime  Daria  was  dressing  the  boy  in 
a  suit  she  had  bought  in  St.  Petersburg 
expressly  for  this  long-meditated,  longed- 
for,  and  dreaded  interview.  The  suit  was 
the  very  richest  purple  silk — cap,  tunic, 
and  trousers  lucked  into  Wellington  boots; 
in  the  capa  short  peacopk's  feather.  This 
was  all  the  motherly  art  she  practiced.  She 
prepared  no  tale  nor  bewitching  accents, 
and  she  trembled  at  what  she  was  going 

to    do. 

Anna  Petrovna.  finding  she  did  not 
come,  rang  and  in  paired  whether  the 
nurse  bad  come  back. 

"  No." 

"  Has  the  carriage  returned?" 

"No." 

Another  hour  of  doubt,  and  wheels  were 
heard. 

Anna  Petrovna  seated  herself  in  state, 
and  steeled  herself. 

The  door  opened  softly,  and  two  figures 
came  toward  her  down  the  vast  apartment. 

It  was  the  y_oung  Alexis  and  his  mother. 
I  put  him  first  because  his  mother  did  so. 
She  kept  him  a  little  before  her  to  bear  the 
brunt;  with  a  white  hand  on  his  shoulder, 
she  advanced  him,  and  half  followed,  like 
a  bending  lily,  with  sweet  obsequious  Orien- 
tal grace. 

As  they  advanced  Anna  Petrovna  rose, 
rather  haughtily  at  first;  but  no  sooner 
were  they  near  her  than  she  uttered  a  cry 
so  loud,  so  passionate,  though  devoid  of 


TIT   FOR    TAT. 


Ill 


terror,  that  it  pierced  and  thrilled  all 
hearts  without  alarming  them. 

"  My  boy,  my  child,  come  back  from  the 
dead — where — how?  Am  I  mad  —  am  I 
dreaming?  No,  it's  my  child,  my  beau- 
tiful child!  He  is  seven  years  old — the 
painter  has  just  left.  Jesu !  this  is  Thy 
doing.  Thou  hast  had  pity  on  another 
bereaved  mother." 

Her  age  left  her.  She  was  down  on  her 
knees  before  the  boy  in  a  moment,  and  held 
him  tight,  and  put  back  his  hair,  and  gazed 
into  his  eyes,  and  devoured  him  with  kisses. 
"  Lawyers,  witnesses,  judges,  mortal  men, 
this  is  beyond  your  power.  Nature  speaks. 
God  gives  me  back  my  darling  from  the 
dead.  Bless  you  for  giving  me  back  my 
own — my  own,  own,  own.  To  my  arms, 
my  children."  Then  all  three  were  locked 
in  one  embrace,  and  the  tears  fell  like  rain. 
Blessed,  balmy  dew  of  loving  hearts  too 
long  estranged ! 


CHAPTER  VI. 

There  are  scenes  that  cannot  be  pro- 
longed on  paper.  It  would  chill  them.  I 
shall  only  say  that  long  after  the  first  wild 
emotion  had  subsided  Anna  Petrovna  and 
her  new-found  daughter  could  not  part  even 
for  a  moment,  but  must  sit  with  clasped 
hands  looking  at  their  child,  to  whom 
liberty  was  conceded  in  virtue  of  his  sex, 
and  he  roamed  the  apartments  inquisitive, 
followed  by  four  eyes. 

Another  carriage  was  sent  to  the  cottage 
for  clothes.  Daria  and  her  boy  were  kept 
for — ever;  and,  to  close  the  salient  in- 
cidents of  the  day,  Anna  Petrovna  hur- 
ried off  a  letter  to  Vladimir,  peremptorily 
forbidding  him  to  appeal  against  the  de- 
cision, and  promising  him,  on  that  con- 
dition, a  liberal  allowance  during  his  life- 
time out  of  the  personal  estate  of  the  writer, 
for  she  had  saved  a  large  sum  on  the  estate. 


Two  days  later  came  Ivan  Ulitch,  who 
had  been  at  the  cottage  and  learned  the 
reconciliation.  The  object  of  his  visit  was 
to  secure  his  beloved  Daria  from  molesta- 
tion from  Vladimir  Alexeitch,  who,  he  felt 
sure,  would  return  very  soon.  He  brought 
with  him  a  hangdog-looking  fellow,  who 
had  been  a  servant  in  the  great  house, 
and  expelled.  Ivan  sought  an  interview. 
Daria's  influence  secured  it  to  him  direct- 
ly. He  came  into  the  room  with  this  fel- 
low crouching  behind  him. 

Anna  Petrovna,  with  her  quick  eye, 
recognized  both  Ivan  and  the  man  direct- 
ly- 

"I  am  pleased,"  said  she,  "to  receive  a 
faithful  friend  of  my  dear  daughter,  and 
sorry  to  see  him  in  bad  company." 

"Madame,"  said  Ivan,  "do  not  regard 
him  as  anything  but  a  minister  of  justice. 
A  greater  villain  than  he  ever  was  inter- 
cepted two  letters  that  even  a  fiend  might 
have  spared.  This  poor  knave  found  them 
afterward  in  Vladimir's  pocket,  read  them, 
and  copied  their  contents,  and  placed  his 
copies  in  the  envelopes.  Pray  God  for 
fortitude,  dear  lady,  to  read  these  letters, 
and  know  your  enemies,  since  now  you 
know  your  friends." 

As  he  spoke  he  held  out  two  letters. 
Anna  Petrovna  took  them  slowly.  She 
opened  one  of  them  with  a  piteous  cry. 
It  was  from  Alexis,  announcing  his  mar- 
riage, but  protesting  love  and  duty,  and 
asking  pardon  in  tender  and  most  respect- 
ful terms.  "Our  lives,"  said  he,  "shall  be 
given  to  reconcile  you  to  my  happiness." 

While  she  read  her  face  was  so  awful 
and  so  pitiful  that  by  tacit  consent  they  all 
retired  from  the  room,  and  left  her  to  see 
how  she  had  been  abused.  When  they 
came  back  they  found  her  on  her  knees. 
She  had  been  weeping  bitterly  to  think 
that  her  son  had  died  unforgiven  because 
she  had  been  deceived  by  a  reptile. 

As  she  suffered  deeply,  so  she  acted 
earnestly. 

She  called  all  her  servants,  and  gave 
them  a  stern  order. 

She  dismissed  the  steward  on  the  spot 
for  complicity  with  Vladimir,  and  she 
offered  Ivan  the  place,  with  rooms  in  the 


112 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


house.  He  embraced  the  offer  at  once,  to 
be  near  Daria. 

Daria  and  she  were  rocking  together, 
and  Daria's  sweet  voice  was  comforting 
her  with  a  long  prospect  of  love  and  peace, 
when  grinding  wheels  and  barking  curs 
announced  the  return  of  Vladimir. 

Ivan  left  the  room  hastily,  saying. 
''Leave  him  to  me." 

Fur  thi  first  time  in  the  memory  of  man 
the  great  door  of  that  house  did  not  open 
to  a  visitor.  Vladimir  had  to  knock.  The 
hall  re-echoed  with  the  heavy  hammer. 

Then  the  door  opened  slowly,  and  dis- 
played a  phalanx  of  servants  planted  there 
grimly,  not  to  receive  but  to  obstruct. 

They  forbade  him,  by  order  of  Anna 
Petrovna,  to  enter,  and  were  as  insolent 
as  they  had  been  obsequious. 

He  threatened  violence.  They  prepared 
to  retort  to  it.  When  he  saw  that,  the 
Asiatic  re-appeared  in  him.  "  May  1  ask 
for  a  reason?"  said  he,  very  civilly. 

Ivan  stepped  forward.  "Sir,"  saiil  he, 
"a  dishonest  servant  took  two  letters  you 
intercepted.  Tiny  were  written  at  Pi  ters- 
burg  after  the  marriage.  He  substituted 
copies,  and  the  bereaved  mother  isweepiDg 
over  the  originals." 

"Ah!"  said  Vladimir,  and  was  silent. 
He  literally  fled.  His  face  was  never 
seen  again  in  that  part  of  Russia.  Yet 
lie  had  the  hardihood  to  claim  the  prom- 
ise of  a  pension,  and  that  high-minded 
woman,  who  could  not  break  a  promise, 


flung  it  him  yearly  through  her  steward, 
Ivan  Ulitch. 

Balmy  peace  and  love  descended  now  on 
the  house,  and  abode  there.  Alexis  and 
Ivan  grew  older,  but  Anna  Petrovna 
younger.  Her  daughter's  voice  and  her 
daughter's  love  were  ever-flowing  foun- 
tains of  gentle  joy;  still,  like  Naomi  of 
old,  her  bliss  was  in  her  boy.  His  father 
and  he  seemed  blended  in  her  heart,  and 
that  heart  grew  green  again. 

Ivan  is  calmly  happy  in  the  present  and 
in  the  certainty  that  Daria  will  never 
marry  any  man  but  him,  aud  in  the  hope 
that  one  day  Anna  Petrovna  will  let  him 
marry  her.  At  present  he  is  afraid  to  ask 
her  for  the  mother  of  Alexis.  But  Alexis 
is  paving  the  way  by  calling  him  "my 
father."  It  rests  with  Anna  Petrovna; 
for  if  she  says  the  word,  Daria  will  marry 
Ivan  merely  to  please  a  good  friend,  and 
afterward  be  surprised  to  find  how  happy 
he  can  make  her. 

He  has  never  revealed,  and  never  will, 
that  masterstr  ke  of  fraud  with  which 
he  baffled  fraud  and  perpetuated  right  by 
wrong. 

He  is  right  not  to  boast  of  it,  and  I  hope 
I  may  not  be  doing  ill  to  record  it.  The 
expression  so  many  French  writers  delight 
in,  "a  pious  fraud."  is  the  most  .Satanic 
phrase  1  know. 

I  did  not  invent  the  maneuver  which  is 
the  point  of  this  tale,  and  I  pray  Heaven 
no  man  ma}-  imitate  it. 


RUS. 


My  dear  lamented  brother  William  Bar- 
rington  Reade  was  first  a  sailor,  then  a 
soldier,  then  a  country  squire,  and  had 
from  his  youth  an  eye  for  character  and 
live  facts  worth  noting  by  sea  or  land. 
He  furnished  me  from  his  experiences  sev- 
eral tidbits  that  figure  in  my  printed  works ; 


for  instance,  in  "Hard  Cash,"  the  charac- 
ter and  fate  of  Maxley,  and  the  maneuvers 
of  the  square-rigged  vessel  attacked  by  the 
schooner;  also  the  mad  yachtsman,  and 
his  imitation  of  piracy,  in  "The  Jilt,"  etc. 
So  now  I  offer  the  public  his  little  study  of 
a  real  character  in  rural  life. 


RUS. 


113 


Indeed,  such  quiet  things  may  serve  to 
relieve  the  general  character  of  my  work; 
for  pen  in  hand,  I  am  fond  of  hot  passions 
and  pictorial  incidents,  and,  like  the  his- 
torians, care  too  little  for  the  "middle  of 
humanity." 

George  Moore,  a  shoemaker,  with  a  shock 
head  of  black  hair,  a  new  wife,  half  a  hun- 
dred of  leather,  and  two  sovereigns,  came 
over  from  Evvelme  to  Ipsden,  and  applied 
to  my  father  for  a  cottage  on  Scott's  Com- 
mon. It  was  a  very  large  cottage;  the 
kitchen  between  twenty  and  thirty  feet 
long;  old  style — smoked  rafters,  diamond 
panes,   etc. 

A  shed,  pigsty,  and  two  paddocks  went 
with  the  tenement.  Rent  of  the  lot,  £11. 
Moore  became  the  tenant,  made  boots  and 
shoes  incessantly  for  years,  and  sold  them 
at  Henley, Reading,  orWallingford  market. 

He  would  carry  in  a  sackful  on  his  back, 
stand  behind  them  in  the  market-place,  and 
if  he  got  rid  of  them,  would  often  buy  a  pig 
or  a  cow,  or  oven  a  pony,  with  such  excel- 
lent judgment  that  he  always  made  a  profit ; 
and  when  he  bought  at  a  fair  he  often  sold 
his  purchase  on  the  road,  for  the  nimble 
shilling  tempted  him.  One  of  his  declared 
axioms  was,  "Quick  come  and  safe  keep.'' 

In  1849  my  brother  inherited  the  Ipsden 
estates,  and  a  year  or  two  afterward  occu- 
pied an  old  house  of  his  near  Scott's  Com- 
mon, and  so  he  became  Mr.  Moore's  neigh- 
bor. He  soon  found  out  to  his  delight  that 
this  shoemaker  was  a  character,  his  lead- 
ing traits  ostentatious  parsimony,  humor- 
ous avarice,  and  jolly  dissatisfaction;  his 
phraseology  a  curious  mixture  of  rural 
dialect  and  metropolitan  acumen. 

As  many  of  his  sayings  sounded  like 
proverbs,  my  brother  once,  to  gratify  him 
doubly,  said,  "  Mr.  Moore,  neighbors  should 
be  neighborly,"  and  set  him  to  measure  his 
growing  family  for  shoes.  He  might  as 
well  have  given  the  order  to  Procrustes : 
Moore  made  shoes  for  shojjs;  he  expected 
feet  to  fit  his  shoes;  and,  after  all,  live 
leather  is  more  yielding  than  dead. 

The  bill  was  settled  one  half-penny  short. 
From  that  day,  although  Moore's  conver- 
sations with  my  brother  rambled  over  vari- 
ous topics,  they  always  ended  one  way — 


"Beg  pardon,  sir,  but  there  was  a  half- 
penny to  come  last  account." 

Then  the  humorist  would  fumble  for  this 
half-penny,  but  never  find  it.  He  used  it 
as  a  little  seton. 

Moore  once  related  to  him  his  visit  to  a 
road-side  hotel  in  the  old  coaching  days. 

"I  came  in  mortal  hungry,  squire,  and 
there  was  a  table  spread.  Don't  know  as 
ever  I  saw  so  much  vittles  all  at  one  time. 
Found  out  afterward  it  was  for  the  pas- 
sengers' dinner.  Sets  me  down  just  before 
the  beautifulest  ham — a  picture — takes  the 
knife  and  fork,  and  sets  there  with  my 
fistes"  (pronounced  mediaevally  "fistys") 
"on  the  table,  and  the  knife  and  fork  in 
'em.  'Landlerd,'  says  I  to  a  chap  in  a 
parson's  tie,  'be  you  the  landlerd?'  No; 
he  was  the  waiter.  'Then,'  says  I,  'you 
tell  the  landlerd  I  wants  to  speak  to  'un 
very  particular;'  so  presently  the  landlerd 
comes  as  round  as  a  bar'l  mostly.  'Land- 
lerd,' says  I,  with  my  fistes  on  the  table, 
and  the  knife  p'inting  uppards,  'I  must 
know  what  the  reckoning  ool  be  afer  I 
sticks  my  ferk  into't.'" 

Somebody  with  whom  he  traded  wanted 
one  shilling  and  tenpence  more  than  his 
due  in  a  considerable  transaction.  Moore 
made  the  parish  ring. 

However,  he  appears  in  this  case  to  have 
thought  he  owed  mankind  in  general,  and 
Scott's  Common  in  particular,  an  explana- 
tion, so  he  gave  it  to  the  gamekeeper, 
Will  Johnstone,  Johnstone  retailed  it  at 
the  "Black  Horse,"  and  round  it  came  to 
my  humorist,  via  the  gardener. 

"Ye  may  say  one  shilling  and  tenpence 
is  a  very  little  sum.  Here's  Moore  run- 
ning all  over  the  parish  after  one  ten. 
But  it's  a  beginning.  A  text  is  a  little 
thing ;  but  parson  can  make  half  an  hour's 
sermon  on't." 

Rustic  Oxfordshire  has  never  within  the 
memory  of  man  accepted  that  peevish  rule 
of  the  grammarians,  "  Two  negatives  make 
an  affirmative."  We  have  a  grammatical 
creed  worth  two  of  that.  We  hold  that 
less  than  two  negatives  might  be  taken  for 
an  affirmative,  or  at  least  for  an  assent. 

A  Cambridge  man,  whom  his  college, 
St.  John's,  transplanted  into  my  county 


114 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


as  an  incumbent,  declared  to  me  once  that 
he  heard  a  native  of  my  county  address  a 
band  of  workmen  thus :  "  Ha'n't  never  a 
one  of  you  chaps  seen  nothing  of  no  hat?" 

Moore  accumulated  negatives  as  if  they 
were  half-pence.  A  neighbor  to  whom  he 
had  now  and  then  lent  a  spade,  or  a  fry- 
ing-pan, or  a  fagot,  offended  him,  and  they 
slanged  each  other  heartily  over  the  pal- 
ings. Moore  wound  up  the  controversy 
thus:  "Don't  you  never  come  to  my  house 
for  nothing  no  more,  for  ye  won't  get  it." 

The  population  of  Scott's  Common  is 
sparse,  but  the  dialogue  being  both  long 
and  loud,  seven  girls  had  collected,  from 
four  to  thirteen  years  old.  With  this  as- 
sembly Moore  shared  his  triumph.  "  There, 
you  gals,  I  have  sewed  up  his  stocking," 
said  George  Moore. 

Scott's  Farm  was  a  small  holding  sur- 
rounded by  woods,  Hat  enough  when  you 
got  up  to  it,  but  on  very  high  ground. 
Not  a  drop  of  well-water  for  miles.  The 
men  drank  no  liquid  but  beer;  the  women, 
tea  and  tadpoles. 

None  of  the  larger  tenants  would  be 
bothered  with  "Scott's."  But  small  farm- 
ers are  poor  fanners  and  unsuccessful.  One 
or  two  failed  on  it,  and  it  was  vacant.  The 
homestead  was  a  picture  to  look  at,  and  in 
the  farmyard  a  natural  cart  shod,  perhaps 
without  its  fellow,  an  old  oak  tree  twenty- 
seven  feet  in  girth,  and  of  enormous  age. 
The  top  was  gone  entirely;  so  was  the  in- 
side. Nothing  stood  but  a  large  hollow 
stem  with  three  or  four  vertical  chasms, 
one  so  broad  that  a  cart  could  pass  into 
the  wooden  funnel.  Yet  that  shell  put  out 
the  greenest  oak  leaves  in  all  the  country- 
side. An  artist  could  have  lived  at  Scott's 
Farm  and  made  money.  But  the  acres  at- 
tached to  the  delightful  residence  made  it 
a  bad  bargain  to  farmers;  for  the  acres  and 
the  low  rent  tempted  the  tenants  to  farm. 

Now  you  must  understand  that  for  a 
long  time  past  Ireland  has  been  telling 
England  a  falsehood,  and  England  swal- 
lowing it  for  a  self-evident  truth,  and 
building  rotten  legislation  on  it,  viz.,  that 
the  rent  is  the  principal  expense  of  a  farm. 

It  is  not  one-fifth  the  expense  of  a  well- 
tilled  farm ;  and  of  an  ill-cultivated  farm 


not  one -tenth,  for  it  is  the  last  thing 
paid. 

Scott's  Farm  was  one  out  of  a  hundred 
examples  I  have  seen.  The  rent  of  seventy- 
five  acres,  plus  a  charming  house  and  home- 
stead, was  fifty  pounds.  Yet  one  bad  farmer 
after  another  broke  on  it,  and  grumbled  at 
the  rent,  though  it  could  not  have  been  the 
rent  that  hurt  him,  for  he  never  paid  it. 

Well,  Mr.  Moore  called  on  my  brother, 
and  offered  to  rent  Scott's  Farm. 

My  brother  stared  with  amazement,  then 
said,  dryly,  "  Did  you  ever  do  me  an  in- 
jury?" 

"Not  as  I  know  on,  squire;  nor  don't 
mean  to." 

"  Then  why  should  I  do  you  one? 
Scott's?     Why.    they  all  break  on  it." 

"Oh!"  said  Moore,  "folk  as  ha'n't  got 
no  head-piece,  nor  no  money  neither,  are 
bound  to  break  on  a  farm.  'Tain't  to  say 
George  Moore  is  agoing  to  break." 

My  brother  replied :  "  Oh,  I  know  you 
are  a  good  judge  of  live  stock,  and  I  dare 
say  you  have  picked  up  a  notion  of  farm- 
ing.    But  you  see  it  requires  capital." 

"Well,  squire,"  said  the  shoemaker, 
"I'm  not  a  thousand-pound  man,  but  I'm 
a  nine-hundred  pound  man.  I'll  show  you 
some  on't,"  and  he  actually  pulled  out  of 
his  breeches-pocket  £700  in  bank-notes, 
and  presented  them  as  his  references.  In 
short,  he  rented  Scott's  Farm. 

But  my  brother  could  never  bear  any- 
body who  amused  him  to  come  to  grief, 
and  so  for  a  time  he  was  in  anxiety  lest 
Moore  should  lose  the  money  he  had  ac- 
quired by  his  industry  and  kept  by  his 
economy.  However,  the  new  tenant  stocked 
the  farm,  which  his  predecessors  had  not 
done,  and  let  fall  remarks  indicating  pros- 
perity, as  that  a  farmer  had  no  business  to 
go  to  his  barn-door  for  rent,  and  that  he 
could  make  a  living  anywhere.  Besides, 
the  rising  ricks  spoke  for  themselves. 

I  believe  he  had  been  tenant  nine  months 
when,  one  day,  my  brother,  seeing  him 
smoking  a  pipe  over  his  farmyard  gate, 
dismounted  expressly  to  talk  to  him. 

Mr.  Moore's  first  sentence  betraj-ed  that 
he  was  no  longer  a  shoemaker. 

"  Look  'ee  here,  squire,  a  farmering  man 


BUS. 


115 


wants  to  have  four  eyes,  and  three  hands : 
two  for  work,  one  is  always  wanted  in  his 
pocket  —  rent,  tithe,  labor,  taxes,  rates. 
Why,  the  parish  tapped  me  three  times 
last  month.  My  wife  got  behind  in  her 
washing  through  wasting  of  her  time 
counting  out  the  money  I  had  to  pay 
away.  As  to  my  men,  I  be  counted 
sharp,  but  I  must  be  split  in  two  to  be 
sharp  enough  for  they." 

"I  was  afraid  you  would  find  the  rent 
heav}-,"  said  my  brother,  innocently. 

"The  rent!"  cried  Mr.  Moore;  "I  don't 
vally  it  that!"  and  he  snapped  his  fingers 
at  it.  "  But  how  about  the  labor — men 
and  horses,  and  women ;  and  the  three 
crops  of  weeds  on  one  field,  through  me 
coming  after  tipplers  and  fools  as  left  the 
land  foul  for  Moore  to  clean  after  they. 
And  then — ■"  He  paused,  and  jerking  his 
thumb  over  his   shoulder,    added,    "  The 

BLACK  SLUG  THAT  EATS  UP  THE  TENTH 
OF  THE  LAND." 

My  brother  did  not  understand  the 
simile  one  bit  till  he  followed  the  direc- 
tion of  Mr.  Moore's  thumb,  and  beheld  a 
beneficed  clergyman  crossing  the  common 
like  a  lamb,  all  unconscious  of  the  injuri- 
ous metaphor  shot  after  him  by  oppressed 
agriculture. 

Having  suppressed  a  grin  with  some 
difficulty,  my  brother  said,  gravely:  "I'll 
tell  ye  what  it  is,  Moore ;  if  you  went  to 
church  a  little  of  tener,  you  would  find  out 
that  the  clergy  are  worth  their  money  to 
those  who  go  by  their  advice  in  this  world, 
and  so  learn  not  to  forget  the  next.  Come, 
now ;  our  parson  has  no  tithes,  and  only  a 
very  small  stipend,  yet  I  never  see  you  at 
church.  Surely  you  might  go  once  on  a 
Sunday." 

Now  I  must  premise  that  Mr.  A , 

justly  dissatisfied  with  the  morals  of  that 
parish,  preached  sermons  which  were  iu 
fact  philippics. 

"Why,  squire,"  .answered  Moore,  "I 
have  tried  'un.  But  I  do  take  after  my 
horses:  I  can't  stand  all  whip  and  no 
earn." 

Undaunted  by  the  comparison,  his  land- 
lord gravely  reminded  him  that  there  were 
prayers  as  well  as  a  sermon,  and  prayers 


full  of  charity,  and  fitted  to  all  conditions 
of  life. 

"Well,  squire,"  said  the  farmer,  half 
apologetically,  "I'll  tell  you  the  truth;  I 
never  was  a  hog  at  prayers." 

It  was  a  pity  he  could  not  add  he  never 
was  greed y  of  this  world's  goods. 

One  day  my  brother  heard  his  voice 
rather  loud  in  the  yard,  and  found  him 
bargaining  with  a  lad  in  a  smock-frock — ■ 
a  stranger. 

At  sight  of  the  squire  the  injured  farmer 
appealed  to  him.  "Look  at  'un,"  said  he, 
"a-standing  there."  The  lad  remained  im- 
passive as  the  gate-post  under  the  scrutiny 
thus  dramatically  invited. 

"  A  wants  ten  shilling  a  week,  and 
three  pound  Michaelmas."  Then  turning 
from  my  brother  to  the  lad :  "  Now  what 
did  you  have  at  your  last  place — without 
a  lie?" 

"  Six  shillings,  and  a  pound  at  Michael- 
mas," said  the  young  fellow,  calmly. 

"  And  you  thinks  to  rise  me  ten  shil- 
lings !  Now,  tell  'ee  what  it  is,  young  man, 
you  hire  yourself  to  keep  the  mildew  out 
o'  my  wheat,  and  the  rot  out  o'  my  sheep, 
or  else  draa  no  wages  out  o'  me.  You  make 
me  safe  as  my  horses  shan't  go  broken- 
winded,  nor  blind,  nor  lame,  while  you  be 
driving  on  'em,  nor  my  cows  shan't  slip 
their  calves,  nor  my  sows  shan't  lay  over 
their  litters  and  smother  'em.  I  maunt 
have  no  fly  in  my  turmots  under  you,  my 
barley  and  wuts  must  come  to  the  rick  nice 
and  dry  and  bright,  and  then  I'll  pay  you 
half  a  sovereign  a  week."  With  sudden 
friendliness — "Where  did  'ee  come  from?" 

"Cholsey  village." 

"  How  ever  did  'ee  find  your  way  all  up 
here?" 

The  lad  said  it  was  only  six  miles;  he 
had  found  his  way  easy  enough. 

"  Then  you'll  find  it  easier  back.  Good- 
morning." 

And  off  he  went.  The  lad  put  his  hands 
in  his  breeches-pockets  and  strolled  away 
unmoved  in  another  direction ;  and  my 
brother  retired  swiftly  to  take  down  every 
syllable  of  this  inimitable  dialogue.  It 
afterward  appeared  that  his  was  the  only 


116 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


genuine  exit;  the  other  two  were  examples 
of  what  the  French  dramatists  call  f ansae 
sortie.  For  the  very  next  day  this  Cholsey 
lad  was  at  work  for  Mr.  Moore. 

"  Halloo !"  said  my  brother.  "  Why,  you 
parted  never  to  meet  again — far  as  the  poles 
asunder.     Ha!  ha!" 

"Oh,  that  is  how  we  begins!"  explained 
Moore,  with  a  grin.  "  Bought  him  at  my 
own  price.  But"  (with  sudden  gloom)  "a 
wool  have  two  pound  Michaelmas,  the  riso- 
lute  To-a-d." 

Moore  had  a  cur  his  wife  implored  him 
to  hang  out  of  her  way.  "  Well,"  said  he, 
"anything  for  a  quiet  life.  You  find  the 
card;  I'll  find  the  labor." 

Ere  a  cord  was  found  Moore  caught  Bighl 
of  the  good  easy  squire;  he  came  out  and 
told  him  Toby  had  been  poaching  on  his 
own  account,  and  had  better  be  tied  up  ex- 
cept  when  wanted.  <  (ffered  him  for  three 
half-crowns,  praised  him  up  to  the  skies. 

Squire  Easy  submitted  to  the  infliction, 
and  Toby  was  sent  to  the  kennel. 

Next  week,  Moore  had  made  a  bad  liar- 
gain.  "I  let  'ee  have  Toby  too  cheap ;  I 
hear  of  all  sides  .ts  he's  the  best  rabbi ter 
you  ha'  got,  a  regular  hexpeditious  good 
dog." 

He  gave  his  landlord  a  piece  of  advice 
which,  to  tell  the  truth,  that  gentleman 
needed  sorely;  for  he  was  never  known  to 
makeonegood  bargain  in  all  his  life.  Said 
Mr.  Moore:  "Don't  you  never  listen  to  a 
chap  as  won't  say  aforehand  how  much 
he'll  give  or  take  to  a  farthing,  or  a  half- 
penny at  the  very  outside.  When  that 
there  humbug  says  to  you,  'Oh,  we  shan't 
quarrel,'  says  you,  Til  take  care  of  that, 
for  down  you  puts  it  to  a  farthing. '  When 
he  says,  'Oh,  I'll  not  hurt  you,'  says  you, 
'Oh,  yes,  ye  will,  if  I  give  you  a  chance; 
put  it  down  to  a  farthing,  or  I'm  off.'  " 

He  let  his  parlor  and  a  bedroom  to  a 
lodger  for  fifteen  shillings  a  week,  a  sum 
unheard  of  in  those  parts. 

This  transpired  in  a  few  months,  and 
my  brother  congratulated  him. 

Here  is  his  reply  ad  verbum: 

"Why,  squire,  it  doesn't  all  stick  to  me. 
There's  my  missus,  she  is  took  off  her  work 


to  attend  to  he.  Then  there's  a  gre-at  hearty 
gal  I'm  fossed  to  hire.  There  goes  eigh- 
teen-pence  a  week  and  her  vittels.  I  tried 
to  get  a  sickly  one  as  wouldn't  eat  my 
head  off,  but  there  warn't  a  sickly  one  as 
'ud  come.  Feared  of  a  little  work!  Now" 
(with  sudden  severity)  "  do  I  get  half  a 
guinea  out  of  he?"  Then  with  a  shout: 
"  No !"  Then  with  the  sudden  calmness  of 
unalterable  conviction :  "  Not  by  sixpence." 

This  seems  a  tough  man,  not  to  be  easily 
moved,  a  wary  man,  not  to  be  outwitted ; 
yet  misfortune  befell  him,  and  rankled  for 
years. 

My  brother  left  Oxfordshire  and  settled 
in  a  milder  climate.  During  his  long  so- 
journ there  a  vague  report  reached  him 
liiai  bad  money  bad  been  passed  on  Moore, 
and  lie  bad  made  the  district  ring. 

When  after  seven  years  my  brother  re- 
turned to  his  native  woods,  he  looked  in 
at  Scott's  Farm,  and  there  was  Moore,  the 
only  familiar  face  about  which  did  not 
seem  a  day  older.  After  other  friendly 
inquiries  my  brother  said: 

"  But  how  about  the  bad  money  that  was 
passed  on  you?     Tell  me  all  about  it." 

"Thai  I  wool,"  said  .Moore,  delighted  to 
find  a  good  listener  to  a  grievance  which 
to  him  was  ever  new,  though  the  circum- 
stance was  live  years  old.  "  I  was  at  dung- 
cart  most  of  that  day,  and  then  I  washed 
and  tried  to  get  a  minute  to  milk  the  cow; 
but  bless  your  heart,  they  never  will  let  me 
milk  her  afore  sunset.  It's  Moore  here,  and 
Moore  there,  from  half  a  dozen  of  'em  ;  and 
Mr.  Moore  here,  and  Mr.  Moore  there,  from 
the  one  or  two  as  have  learned  manners, 
which  very  few  of  'em  have  in  these  parts; 
and  between  'em  they  alius  contrive  to  keep 
me  from  my  own  cow  till  dusk.  Well,  sir, 
I  had  got  leave  to  milk  her,  hurry-scurry 
as  usual,  and  night  coming  on,  when  a 
man  I  had  sold  a  fat  hog  to  came  into  the 
yard  to  pay.  '  Wait  a  minute, '  says  I.  But 
no,  he  was  like  the  rest,  couldn't  let  me 
milk  her  in  peace;  wanted  to  settle  and 
drive  the  haacon  home.  So  I  took  my 
head  out  o'  the  cow,  and  I  went  to  him 
without  so  much  as  letting  my  smock 
down,  and  he  gave   me  the  money,    £6 


BUS. 


117 


17s.  I  took  the  gold  in  one  hand  so,  and 
the  silver  in  t'other  so,  and  I  went  across 
the  yard  to  the  house,  and  I  asked  the 
missus  to  get  a  light,  and  then  I  told  the 
mone}7  before  her,  six  sovereigns  and  seven- 
teen shillings,  and  left  her  to  scratch  him 
a  receipt,  while  I  went  back  to  my  cow, 
and  I  thought  to  milk  her  in  peace  at  last. 
But  before  I  had  drained  her  as  should  be, 
out  comes  my  missus,  and  screams  fit  to 
wake  the  dead:  'George!  George!'  'I  be 
coming,'  says  I;  so  I  up  with  the  milk-pail 
and  goes  to  her.  'Whose  cat's  dead  now?' 
says  I,  'for  mercy's  sake.' 

"  'Come  in,  come  in,'  says  she.  'George, 
whoever  is  that  man?  He  have  paid  us  a 
bad  shilling;  look  at  that.'  Well,  we  tried 
that  there  shilling  on  the  table  first,  and 
then  on  the  hearth :  'twas  bad ;  couldn't 
be  wus.  'Run  after  him,'  says  she;  'run 
this  moment.'  'Lard,'  says  I,  'they  be 
half  way  to  Wallingford  by  this  time. 
Here,  give  me  a  scrap  of  paper.  I'll 
carry  it  about  in  my  fob;  he  goes  to  all 
the  markets;  he  will  change  it,  you  may 
be  sure. ' 

"  Well,  the  very  next  Friday  as  ever  was 
I  met  him  at  Wallingford  market,  pulls  out 
the  paper,  shows  him  the  shilling,  tells  him 
it  warn't  good.  He  looks  at  it  and  agreed 
with  me.  'Then  change  it,  if  you  please,' 
says  I.  'What  for?'  says  he.  'I  don't 
want  no  bad  shillings  no  more  nor  you 
do.'  'But,'  says  I,  'price  of  hog  was  six 
seventeen,  and  you  only  paid  six  sixteen 
in  money.'  'Yes,  I  did,'  says  he.  'I 
gave  you  six  seventeen.'  'No,  ye  didn't.' 
'Yes,  I  did.'  'No,  ye  didn't;  you  gave 
me  six  sixteen,  and  this.  Now,  my  man,' 
says  I,  'act  honest  and  pay  me  t'other  shil- 
ling.' No  he  wouldn't.  There  was  a  crowd 
by  this  time,  so  I  said,  'Look  here,  gentle- 
men, I  sold  this  man  a  hog,  and  he  gave 
me  this  in  part  pay,  which  it  ain't  a  real 
shilling,  and  mine  was  a  genuine  hog;'  so 
they  all  said  it  warn't  a  shilling  at  all. 
When  the  man  heard  that  he  was  for  slip- 
ping off,  but  I  stepped  after  him,  with  half 
the  market  at  my  heels.     'Will  you  pay 


me  my  shilling?'  'I  don't  owe  you  no 
shilling,' says  he.  'You  do,' says  I;  'and 
pay  me  my  shilling  you  shall.'  'I  won't.' 
'You  shall;  I'll  pison  your  life  else.' 

"  Next  time  of  asking,  as  the  saying  is, 
was  Reading  market.  Catches  him  cheap- 
ening a  calf .  Takes  out  shilling.  'Now,' 
says  I,  'here's  your  bad  shilling  as  you 
gave  me  for  my  hog — which  it  is  a  warn- 
ing to  honest  folk  with  calves  to  sell,'  says 
I.  'Be  you  going  to  change  it?'  'No,  I 
bain't.'  'Youbain't?'  says  I.  'You  shall, 
then,'  says  I.  'Time  will  show,'  says  he, 
and  bid  me  good-day,  ironical.  I  let  him 
get  a  little  way,  and  then  I  stepped  after 
him.  'Hy,  stop  that  gentleman,'  I  hal- 
looed. 'He  have  given  me  a  bad  shilling.' 
You  might  hear  me  all  over  the  market. 
Then  he  threatened  defanationor  summat; 
I  didn't  keer;  I  bawled  him  out  o'  Read- 
ing market  that  there  afternoon. 

"Met  him  at  Henley  next;  commenced 
operations — took  out  the  shilling.  He 
crossed  over  directly,  I  after  'un,  and 
held  out  the  shilling.  '  'Tain't  no  use,' 
says  I.  'You  shan't  do  no  business  in 
this  here  county  till  you  have  changed  this 
here  shilling.  Come,  my  man,  'tis  only  a 
shilling;  what  is  all  this  here  to  do  about 
a  shilling?'  says  I;  'act  honest  and  give 
me  my  shilling,  and  take  this  here  keep- 
sake back.'  'I  won't,'  says  he.  'You 
won't?'  says  I;  'then  I'll  hunt  3-011  out  of 
every  market  in  England.  I'll  hunt 
ye  into  the  wilderness  and  the  hocean 
wave.' 

"  He  got  very  sick  of  me  in  a  year  or 
two's  marketing,  I  can  tell  you ;  for  I 
never  missed  a  market  now,  because  of  the 
shilling.  He  had  to  give  up  trade  and  go 
home  whenever  he  saw  my  shilling  and  me 
acoming." 

"  And  so  you  tired  him  out?" 

"That  I  did." 

"And  got  your  shilling?" 

"That  I  did  not.  He  found  a  way  to 
cheat  me  after  all"  (with  a  sudden  yell  of 
reprobation).  "He  went  and  died  —  and 
here's  the  shilling!" 


118 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


BORN    TO   GOOD    LUCK. 


Patrick  O'Rafferty  was  a  small 
farmer  in  the  Count}'  Leinster.  He  and 
his  father  before  him  had  been  yearly 
tenants  to  Squire  Ormsby  for  fifty  years 
on  very  easy  terms. 

Patrick  —  more  uneasy  than  his  sire — 
now  and  then  pestered  this  squire  for  a 
lease.  Then  the  squire  used  to  say, 
"Well,  if  you  make  a  point  of  it,  I  will 
have  the  land  valued  and  a  lease  drawn 
accordingly."  But  this  iniquitous  pro- 
posal always  shut  O'Rafferty's  mouth  for 
a  time  lie  was  called  in  the  village 
Paddy  Luck;  and  certainly  he  had  the 
luck  to  get  into  a  good  many  rights  and 
other  scrapes,  and  to  get  out  of  them  won- 
derfully. It  was  lie  who  set  the  name  roll- 
ing; his  neighbors  did  but  accept  it. 

He  professed  certain  powers  akin  to 
divination,  and  they  were  not  generally 
ridiculed,  for  he  was  right  one  time  in 
five,  and  that  was  enough,  for  credulity 
always  forgets  the  usual  and  remembers 
the  eccentric. 

This  worthy  had  a  cow  to  sell,  and  drove 
her  in  to  the  nearest  fair.  He  put  twelve 
pounds  on  her,  and  was  laughed  at.  She 
was  dry,  and  she  was  ugly.  "  Twelve 
pounds!  Go  along  wid  ye."  "Never 
mind  her"  was  Pat's  reply.  "I'm 
Paddy  Luck,  and  it's  meself  that  will 
sell  the  baste  for  twelve  pounds,  and 
divil  a  ha'penny  less."  This  was  his 
proclamation  all  the  morning.  In  the 
afternoon  he  condescended  to  ten  pounds, 
just  to  oblige  the  community.  At  sunset 
he  managed  to  get  eight  pounds,  and  a 
bystander  told  him  he  was  a  luck}'  fellow. 

"That  is  no  news,  then,"  said  he.  It 
was  dark,  and  he  was  tired ;  his  home  was 
twelve  Irish  miles  off ;  he  resolved  to  sleep 


in  the  town.  In  the  meantime  he  went 
to  a  tavern  and  regaled  his  purchaser, 
drank,  danced,  daffed,  showed  his  money, 
got  drunk,  and  was  robbed  by  one  of  the 
light-fingered  gentry  who  prowl  about  a 
fair. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  next  time 
he  ordered  liquor  on  a  liberal  scale — for  he 
was  one  who  treated  semicircular]}-  in  his 
cups — he  could  not  find  a  shilling  to  pay, 
and  the  landlord  put  him  into  the  street. 
He  cooled  himself  al  a  neighboring  pump, 
and  went  in  search  of  gratuitous  lodgings. 
The  hard  -  hearted  town  did  not  provide 
these,  so  he  walked  out  of  it  into  sweeter 
air.  He  was  not  sick  nor  sorry,  (hate 
the  reverse.  He  congratulated  himself  ,,)i 
his  good-luck.  "'Sure  now,"  said  he,  "if 
I  had  Bold  her  for  twelve  pounds,  it's 
four  pounds  I'd  he  losing  by  that  same 
bargain." 

Some  little  distance  outside  the  town  ho 
found  a  deserted  hovel;  there  was  no  door, 
window,  nor  floor;  but  the  roof  was  free 
from  holes  in  one  or  two  places,  and  there 
was  a  dry  corner,  ami  a  heap  of  straw  in 
it.  Paddy  thanked  his  stars  for  providing 
him  with  so  complete  and  gratuitous  a 
shelter,  and  immediately  burrowed  into 
the  straw,  and  was  about  to  drop  asleep 
when  the  glimmer  of  a  lantern  shot  in 
through  the  door-way,  and  voices  mut- 
tered outside. 

Patrick  nestled  deeper  in  the  straw ;  he 
was  a  trespasser,  and  it  seemed  too  late 
and  yet  too  early  for  the  virtues,  charity 
included,  to  be  afoot. 

Two  men  came  in  with  a  c-ack,  a  spade, 
and  a  lantern ;  one  of  them  lifted  the  lan- 
tern up  and  took  a  cursory  glance  round 
the  premises.  Patrick,  whom  the  spade 
had  set  a  shivering,  held  his  breath.  Then 
the   man  put  the  lantern  down,  and  his 


BORN  TO   GOOD  LUCK. 


119 


companion  went  to  work  and  dug,  not  a 
grave,  as  panting  Pat  expected,  but  a  big 
round  hole. 

This  done,  they  emptied  the- sack;  out 
rolled  and  tinkled  silver  salvers  of  all  sizes, 
coffee-pots,  tea-pots,  forks,  spoons,  brooches, 
necklaces,  rings — a  mine  of  wealth  that 
glowed  and  glittered  in  the  light  of  the 
lantern. 

Patrick  began  to  perspire  as  well  as  trem- 
ble. The  men  filled  in  the  hole,  stamped 
the  earth  firmly  down,  and  then  lighted 
their  pipes  and  held  a  consultation.  The 
question  was  how  to  dispose  of  these  valu- 
ables. After  some  differences  of  opinion 
they  agreed  that  one  Barney  was  the  fence 
they  would  invite  to  the  spot,  and  if  he 
would  not  give  one  hundred  pounds  for 
the  spoil  they  would  take  it  to  Dublin.  It 
transpired  that  Barney  lived  at  some  dis- 
tance, but  not  too  far  to  come  to-morrow 
evening  and  inspect  the  booty.  Then,  if 
he  would  spring  to  their  price,  they  would 
go  home  with  him  and  receive  the  coin. 

"My  luck!"  thought  Patrick.  "What 
need  had  they  to  light  their  pipes  and 
chatter  like  two  old  women  about  such  a 
trifle,  without  searching  the  straw  first, 
the  omadhauns!"  The  thieves  retired, 
and  Lucky  Pat  went  quietly  to  sleep. 

He  awoke  in  broad  daylight,  and  strolled 
back  into  the  town.  He  walked  jauntily, 
for,  if  he  had  no  money,  he  possessed  a 
secret.  He  was  too  Irish  and  too  sly  to 
go  to  the  police  office  at  once;  his  little 
game  was  to  try  and  find  out  who  had 
been  robbed,  and  what  reward  they  would 
give. 

Meantime  he  had  to  breakfast  off  a  stale 
roll  given  him  by  a  baker  out  of  charity. 
About  noon  he  passed  through  a  principal 
street,  and  lo!  in  a  silversmith's  shop  was 
a  notice,  written  very  large : 

"THIRTY  GUINEAS  REWARD! 

"  Whereas  these  premises  were  broken 
into  last  night,  and  the  following  valuable 
property  abstracted — " 

Then  followed  an  inventory  a  foot  long. 

"  The  above  reward  will  be  paid  to  any 
person  who  will  give  such  information  as 


may  lead  to  the  conviction  of  the  thieves 
and  the  recovery  of  the  stolen  goods,  or 
any  considerable  part  thereof." 

Patrick  walked  in  and  asked  to  see  the 
proprietor.  A  little  fussy  man  in  a  great 
state  of  agitation  responded  to  that  query. 

"Are  you  in  arnest  now,  sorr?"  asked 
Pat. 

"In  earnest!     Of  course  I  am." 

"  What  if  a  dacent  poor  boy  like  me  was 
to  find  you  the  silver  and  thieves  and  all?" 

"  I'd  give  you  the  thirty  guineas,  and 
my  blessing  into  the  bargain." 

"Maybe  ye  wouldn't  like  to  give  me  my 
dinner  an'  all,  by  raison  I'm  just  famish- 
ing with  hunger?" 

This  proposal  raised  suspicion,  and  the 
proprietor  asked  his  name. 

"  Patrick  O'Rafferty.  I'm  tenant  to 
Squire  Ormsby." 

"I  know  him.  Well,  Patrick,  I  suppose 
you  can  give  me  some  information.  I'll 
risk  the  dinner,  anyway." 

"Ah,  well,  sorr,"  said  Patrick,  "they 
say  'fling  a  sprat  to  catch  a  whale.'  A 
rump  steak  and  a  quart  of  ale  is  a  favorite 
repast  of  mine;  when  I  have  had  'em  I'll 
arn  'em,  by  the  holy  poker !" 

"Step  into  my  back  parlor,  Mr.  Raf- 
ferty,"  said  the  silversmith. 

He  then  sent  for  the  rump-steak  very 
loud,  and  for  a  policeman  in  a  whisper. 

The  steak  came  first,  and  was  most  wel- 
come. When  he  had  eaten  it  the  modest 
O'Rafferty  asked  for  a  pipe  and  pot. 

While  he  smoked  and  sipped  calmly  the 
disguised  policeman  arrived  and  was  asked 
to  examine  him  through  a  little  window. 

"Does  he  look  like  crime?"  whispered 
the  silversmith. 

"No,"  said  the  policeman.  "Calf-like 
innocence  and  impudence  galore." 

The  jeweler  asked  O'Rafferty  to  step 
out.  "Now,  sir,"  said  he,  "you  have 
had  your  dinner,  and  I  don't  grudge  it 
you;  but  if  this  is  a  jest,  let  it  end  here, 
for  I  am  in  sore  trouble,  and  it  would  be 
a  heartless  thing  to  play  on  me." 

"  Och,  hear  to  him  !"  cried  Patrick,  with 
a  whine  as  doleful  as  sudden.  "Did  iver 
an  O'Rafferty  make  a  jist  of  an  honest 
man's  trouble,  or  ate  a  male  off  his  losses? 


120 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


But  what  is  a  hungry  man  worth?  I  could 
not  see  how  to  do  your  work  while  I  was 
famished,  but  now  my  belly  is  full,  and  my 
head  fuller,  glory  be  to  God !" 

"I  don't  know  how  it  is,"  said  the 
jeweler,  aside  to  the  detective;  "he  tells 
me  nothing,  and  yet  somehow  he  gives  me 
confidence. — But,  Mr.  O'Rafferty,  do  con- 
sider: time  flies,  and  I'm  no  nearer  my 
stolen  goods.  What  is  the  first  step  we 
are  to  take?" 

"  The  first  step  was  to  fill  my  belly;  the 
next  step  is  to  find  me — och,  murther,  it  is 
a  rarity !" 

"  Never  mind,"  said  the  disguised  officer. 
"Find  you  what?" 

"A  policeman— that  isn't  a  fool." 


II. 


This  was  a  stinger;  and  so  sudden,  his 
hearers  looked  rather  sheepish  at  him.  It 
was  the  policeman  who  answered. 

"  If  you  will  come  to  the  station,  I  will 
undertake  to  find  you  that." 

Patrick  assented,  and  on  the  way  they 
made  friends;  his  companion  revealed 
himself  and  forgave  the  stinger,  and 
Patrick,  pleased  with  his  good  temper, 
let  him  into  the  plan  he  had  matured 
while  smoking  his  pipe  and  appearing 
to  lose  time.  All  Patrick  stipulated  was 
that  he  himself  should  be  the  person  in 
command ;  and  as  he  alone  knew  where 
the  boot}-  was,  and  was  manifestly  as  crafty 
as  a  badger,  this  was  cheerfully  acceded 
to.  So  an  hour  before  dusk,  four  fellows 
that  looked  like  countrymen  drove  a  cart 
full  of  straw  up  to  the  hovel,  and  made  a 
big  heap  by  adding  it  to  what  was  there 
already. 

Then  two  drove  the  cart  back  to  the  edge 
of  the  town,  and  put  the  horse  up,  and  re- 
joined their  companions  in  ambush,  all  but 
one,  and  he  hid  in  a  dry  ditch  opposite. 
They  were  all  armed,  and  the  outside 
watcher   had   a   novel  weapon — a  power- 


ful blue -light  in  the  shape  of  a  flat 
squib. 

It  is  a  dreary  business  waiting  at  night 
for  criminals  who  may  never  come  at  all, 
or,  if  they  do,  may  be  desperate,  and  fight 
like  madmen  or  wildcats. 

Eight  o'clock  came — nine — ten — eleven 
— twelve;  the  watchers  were  chilled  and 
stiff,   and  Patrick  sleepy. 

One  of  the  policemen  whispered  him: 
"They  won't  come  to-night.  Are  you 
sure  they  have  not  been  and  taken  up 
the  swag?" 

"Not  sure;  but  I  think  not."  The 
policeman  growled  and  muttered  some- 
thing  about  a  mare's  nest. 

"Hush!"  said  another. 

"  What?"   in  an  agitated  whisper. 

"Wheels!" 

Silence. 

They  all  remained  as  still  as  death.  The 
faint  wheels  that  would  have  been  inaudi- 
ble by  day,  rattled  nearer  and  nearer.  It 
was  late  for  a  bona  fide  traveler  to  be 
on  the  road.  Would  the  wheels  pass  the 
hovel? 

They  came  up  fast;  then  they  stopped 
suddenly.  To  the  watchers  everything 
was  audible,  and  every  sound  magnified. 
"When  the  drag  stopped  it  was  like  a  rail- 
way train  pulling  up.  Men  leaped  out, 
and  seemed  to  shake  the  ground.  When 
three  figures  bustled  into  the  hovel  it 
sounded  like  a  rush  of  men.  Then  came 
a  thrilling  question.  Would  the  thieves 
examine  the  premises  before  they  looked 
for  the  booty?  The  chances  were  they 
would. 

Well,  they  did  not.  They  were  in  great 
anxiety  too,  but  it  took  the  form  of  hurrj*. 
They  dug  furiously,  displayed  the  booty 
to  Barney  all  in  a  hurry,  and  demanded 
their  price. 

"Now,  then,  one  hundred  pounds,  or 
take  your  last  look  at  'em." 

"One  hundred  pounds!"  whined  Barney. 
"  Can't  be  done." 

"Very  well;  there's  no  time  to  bar- 
gain." 

•'  I'll  give  eighty  pounds.  But  I  shall 
lose  money  by   'em." 

"  Blarney !     They  are  worth  a  thousand. 


BORN  TO  GOOD  LUCK. 


121 


Here,  Jem,  put  'em  up;  we  can  do  better 
iu  Dublin." 

Barney  whined  and  remonstrated,  but 
ended  by  consenting  to  give  the  price. 

The  words  were  hardly  out  of  his  mouth 
when  the  hovel  gleamed  with  a  lurid  fire, 
so  vivid  and  penetrating  that  every  crevice 
of  it  and  the  very  cobwebs  came  out  dis- 
tinct. 

The  thieves  yelled  with  dismay,  and  one 
ran  away  from  the  light  slap  into  the  dan- 
ger, and  was  dazzled  again  with  opening 
bull's-eyes,  and  captured  like  a  lamb.  The 
other  rushed  blindfold  at  the  entrance,  but 
his  temple  encountered  a  cold  pistol,  and  a 
policeman  immovable  as  a  statue.  He  re- 
coiled, and  was  in  that  moment  of  hesita- 
tion pinned  from  behind  and  handcuffed — 
click !  As  for  Barney,  from  whom  no  fight 
was  expected,  he  was  allowed  to  clamber 
up  the  walls  like  a  mouse  in  a  trap,  then 
tumble  down,  until  the  four-wheel  they 
had  come  in  was  brought  up  by  Paddy 
O'Rafferty.  Then  the  thieves  were  bun- 
dled in,  and  sat  each  of  them  between  two 
honest  men,  and  the  fence  was  attached  by 
the  wrist  to  a  policeman,  who  walked  him 
to  the  same  destination;  but,  like  friend 
Virgil's  bull,  multa  reluctantem,  hanging 
back  in  vain,  and  in  vain  bribing  the  si- 
lent, impenetrable  Bobby. 

Pat  slept  at  the  station,  and  next  morn- 
ing the  jeweler  gave  his  thirty  guineas 
with  a  good  heart,  but  omitted  the  bless- 
ing. Patrick  whined  dismally  at  this  very 
serious  omission,  and  the  worthy  little 
fellow  gave  it  him  with  glistening  eyes, 
"For,"  said  he,  "I'll  own  now  the  loss 
would  have  ruined  me.  I  find  by  my 
books  they  cost  me  thirteen  hundred 
pounds." 

So  then  he  blessed  him  solemnly,  and 
Pat  went  home  rejoicing.  "  I'll  have  more 
luck  than  ever  now,"  said  he.  "I'll  have 
all  sorts  of  luck — good,  bad,  and  indiffer- 
ent." 

When  he  got  home  he  told  the  story  in- 
accurately, and  like  a  monomaniac;  that 
is  to  say,  he  suppressed  all  the  fortitude  and 
sagacity  he  had  shown.  These  were  quali- 
ties he  possessed,  so  he  thought  nothing  of 
them. 


Luck  and  divination  were  what  he  prided 
himself  on.  His  version  ran  thus:  he  had 
the  luck  not  to  sell  his  cow  till  night-fall, 
the  still  better  luck  to  be  robbed  of  his 
money,  and  compelled  to  sleep  in  the 
neighborhood.  Then,  thanks  to  his  super- 
lative luck,  the  queen's  jeweler  had  been 
robbed  of  silver  salvers  the  size  of  the  har- 
vest-moon, two-gallon  tea-pots,  pearls  like 
hazel  nuts,  and  diamonds  as  big  as  broad 
beans;  and  seeing  no  other  way  to  recover 
them,  and  hearing  that  the  wise  man  of 
Gannachee  was  in  the  town,  had  given 
him  a  good  dinner  and  his  pipe,  and 
begged  him  to  use  all  his  powers  as  a 
seer;  of  all  which  the  upshot  was  that 
he  had  put  the  police  on  the  right  track, 
and  recovered  the  booty,  and  caged  the 
thieves,  and  marched  home  with  the  re- 
ward. 

In  telling  this  romance  he  was  careful 
to  take  out  the  thirty  sovereigns  and  jingle 
them,  and  this  musical  appeal  to  the  senses 
so  overpowered  the  understandings  of  his 
neighbors  that  they  swallowed  the  won- 
drous tale  like  spring-water. 

After  this  few  were  bold  enough  to  resist 
his  pretensions  to  luck  and  divination.  He 
was  often  consulted,  especially  about  miss- 
ing property,  and  as  he  now  and  then 
guessed  right,  and  sometimes  had  taken 
the  precaution  to  hide  the  property  him- 
self, which  materially  increased  his  chances 
of  finding  it,  he  passed  for  a  seer. 

One  fine  day  Squire  Ormsby  learned  to 
his  dismay  that  his  pantry  had  been  broken 
into  and  a  mass  of  valuable  plate  taken. 
Mr.  Ormsby  was  much  distressed,  not  only 
on  account  of  the  value,  but  the  length  of 
time  certain  pieces  had  been  in  his  family. 
He  distrusted  the  police  and  publicity  in 
these  cases,  and  his  wife  prevailed  on  him 
to  send  for  Patrick  O'Rafferty. 

That  worthy  came,  and  heard  the  story. 
He  looked  at  the  lady  and  gentleman,  and 
his  self-deception  began  to  ooze  out  of  him. 
To  humbug  his  humble  neighbors  was  not 
difficult  nor  dangerous,  but  to  deceive  and 
then  undeceive  and  disappoint  his  land- 
lord was  quite  another  matter. 

He  put  on  humility,  and  said  this  was 
a  matter  beyond  him  entirely.     Then  the 


122 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   MEADE. 


squire  was  angry,  and  said,  bitterly,  "  No 
doubt  he  would  rather  oblige  his  neigh- 
bors, or  a  shop-keeper  who  was  a  stranger 
to  him,  than  the  man  whose  land  had  fed 
him  and  his  for  fifty  years."  He  was  pro- 
ceeding in  the  same  strain  when  poor  Pat, 
with  that  dismal  whine  the  merry  soul  was 
subject  to  occasionally,  implored  him  not 
to  murder  him  entirely  with  hard  words; 
he  would  do  his  best. 

"No  man  can  do  more,"  said  Mr.  <  >rms- 
by.  "Now,  how  will  you  proceed?  Can 
we  render  you  any  assistance?" 

Patrick  said,  humbly,  and  in  a  downcast 
way,  he  would  like  to  see  the  place  where 
the  thieves  got  in. 

He  was  taken  to  the  pantry  window,  and 
examined  it  inside  and  out,  and  all  the  serv- 
ants peeped  at  him. 

"  What  next?"  asked  the  squire. 

Then  Patrick  inwardly  resolved  to  get  a 
good  dinner  out  of  this  business,  however 
humiliating  tbe  end  of  it  might  be.  "  Sorr," 
said  he,  "ye'll  have  to  give  me  a  room  all 
to  myself,  and  a  rump-steak  and  onions; 
and  after  that  your  servants  must  bring 
me  three  pipes  and  three  pints  of  home- 
brewed ale.  Brewer's  ale  hasn't  the  same 
spiritual  effect  on  a  seer's  mind." 

The  order  was  given,  and  set  the  kitchen 
on  fire  with  curiosity.  Some  disbelieved 
his  powers,  but  more  believed  them,  and 
cited  the  jeweler's  business  and  other  ex- 
amples. 

When  the  first  pipe  and  pint  were  to  go 
to  him  a  discussion  took  place  between  the 
magnates  of  the  kitchen  who  should  take 
it  up.  At  last  the  butler  and  the  house- 
keeper insisted  on  the  footman  taking  it. 
Accordinglj-  he  did  so. 

Meantime  Patrick  sat  in  state  digesting 
the  good  food.  He  began  to  feel  a  physi- 
cal complacency,  and  to  defy  the  future ; 
he  only  regretted  that  he  had  confined  his 
demand  to  one  dinner  and  three  pots.  To 
him  in  this  frame  of  mind  entered  the  foot- 
man with  pipe  and  pint  of  ale  as  clear  as 
Madeira. 

Says  Patrick,  looking  at  the  pipe,  "  This 
is  the  first  of  'em." 

The  footman  put  the  things  down  rather 
hurriedly  and  vanished. 


"Humph!"  said  Pat  to  himself,  ''you 
don't  seem  to  care  for  my  company." 

He  sipped  and  smoked,  and  his  mind 
worked. 

The  footman  went  to  the  butler  with  a 
scared  face,  and  said,  "  I  won't  go  near 
him  again;  he  said  I  was  one." 

"Nonsense!''  said  the  butler,  "I'll  take 
up  the  next." 

He  did  so.  Patrick  gazed  in  his  face, 
took  the  pipe,  and  said,  sotto  voce, 

"  This  is  the  second;"  then,  very  regret- 
fully, "only  one  more  to  come." 

The  butler  went  away  much  discom- 
posed, and  told  the  housekeeper. 

"I  can't  believe  it,"  said  she.  "Any- 
way, I'll  know  the  worst." 

So  in  due  course  she  took  up  the  third 
pipe  and  pint,  and  wore  propitiatory 
smiles. 

"This  is  the  last  of 'em,"  said  Patrick, 
solemnly,  and  looked  at  the  glass. 

The  housekeeper  went  down  all  in  a 
flutter.  "  We  are  found  out,  we  are 
ruined,"  said  she.  "There  is  nothing  to 
be  done  now  but —  Yes  there  is ;  we 
must  buy  him,  or  put  the  comether  on 
him   before  he  sees  the  master." 

Patrick  was  half  dozing  over  his  last 
pipe  when  he  heard  a  rustle  and  a  com- 
motion, and  lo!  three  culprits  on  their 
knees  to  him.  With  that  instinctive  sa- 
gacity which  was  his  one  real  gift — so  he 
underrated  it — he  said,  with  a  twinkling 
eye— 

"Och,  thin  you've  come  to  make  a  clane 
brist  of  it,  the  three  Chrischin  vartues  and 
haythen  graces  that  ye  are.  Ye  may  save 
yourselves  the  throuble.  Sure  I  know  all 
about  it." 

"  We  see  you  do.  Y'are  wiser  than 
Solomon,"  said  the  housekeeper.  "But 
sure  ye  wouldn't  abuse  your  wisdom  to 
ruin  three  poor  bodies  like  us?" 

"Poor!"  cried  Patrick.  "Is  it  poor  ye 
call  yourselves?  Ye  ate  and  drink  like 
fighting  cocks;  y'are  clothed  in  silk  and 
plush  and  broadcloth,  and  your  wages  is 
all  pocket-money  and  pin-money.  Yet  ye 
must  rob  the  man  that  feeds  and  clothes 
ye." 

"  It  is  true !  it  is  true !"  cried  the  butler. 


BOEN  TO   GOOD  LUCK. 


123 


"He  spakes  like  a  priest,"  said  the  wo- 
man. "Oh,  alarma!  don't  be  hard  on  us; 
it  is  all  the  devil's  doings;  he  timpted  us. 
Oh!  oh!  oh!" 

"  Whisht,  now,  and  spake  sinse,"  said 
Patrick,  roughly.     "Is  it  melted?" 

"  It  is  not." 

"  Can  you  lay  your  hands  on  it?" 

"  We  can,  every  stiver  of  it.  We  in- 
tinded  to  put  it  back." 

"  That's  a  lie,"  said  Patrick  firmly,  but 
not  in  the  least  reproachfully.  "  Now  look 
at  me,  the  whole  clan  of  ye,  male  and  fay- 
male.  Which  would  you  rather  do — help 
me  find  the  gimcracks,  every  article  of 
'em,  or  be  lagged  and  scragged  and 
stretched  on  a  gibbet  and  such  like  illi- 
gant  divarsions?" 

They  snatched  eagerly  at  the  plank  of 
safety  held  out  to  them,  and  from  that 
minute  acted  under  Mr.  O'Rafferty's 
orders. 

"Fetch  me  another  pint,"  was  his  first 
behest. 

"  Ay,  a  dozen,  if  ye'll  do  us  the  honor  to 
drink  it." 

"  To  the  divil  wid  your  blarney !  Now 
tell  the  master  I'm  at  his  sarvice." 

"Oh,  murder!  what  will  become  of  us? 
Would  you  tell  him  after  all?" 

"Ye  omadhauns,  can't  ye  listen  at  the 
dure  and  hear  what  I  tell  him?" 

With  this  understanding  Squire  Ormsby 
was  ushered  in,  all  expectation. 

"  Yer  honor,"  said  Patrick,  "I  think  the 
power  is  laving  me.  I  am  only  able  to  see 
the  half  of  it.  Now,  if  you  plaze,  would 
you  like  to  catch  the  thieves  and  lose  the 
silver,  or  to  find  the  silver  and  not  find  the 
thieves?" 

"  Why,  the  silver,  to  be  sure." 

"  Then  you  and  my  lady  must  go  to  mass 
to-morrow  morning,  and  when  you  come 
back  we  will  look  for  the  silver,  and  may- 
be, if  we  find  it,  your  honor  will  give  me 
that  little  bit  of  a  lease." 

"  One  thing  at  a  time,  Pat ;  you  haven't 
found  the  silver  yet." 

At  nine  o'clock  next  morning  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ormsby  returned  from  mass  and 
found  O'Rafferty  waiting  for  them  at 
their  door.     He  had  a  long  walking-stick 


with  a  shining  knob,  and  informed  them, 
very  solemnly,  that  the  priest  had  sprinkled 
it  for  him  with  holy  water. 

Thus  armed,  he  commenced  the  search. 
He  penetrated  into  outhouses,  and  applied 
his  stick  to  chimneys  and  fagots  and  cold 
ovens,  and  all  possible  places.     No  luck. 

Then  he  proceeded  to  the  stableyard, 
and  searched  every  corner;  then  into  the 
shrubbery;  then  into  the  tool-house.  No 
luck.  Then  on  to  the  lawn.  By  this  time 
there  were  about  thirty  at  his  heels. 

Disgusted  at  this  fruitless  search,  Patrick 
apostrophized  his  stick:  "Bad  cess  to  you, 
y'are  only  good  to  burn.  Ye  kape  turning 
away  from  ever}7  place;  but  ye  don't  turn 
to  anything  whatever.  Stop  a  bit!  Oh, 
holy  Moses!  what  is  this?" 

As  he  spoke,  the  stick  seemed  to  rise  and 
point  like  a  gun.  Patrick  marched  in 
the  direction  indicated,  and  after  a  while 
seemed  to  be  forced  by  the  stick  into  a 
run.  He  began  to  shout  excitedly,  and 
they  all  ran  after  him.  He  ran  full  tilt 
against  a  dismounted  water-barrel,  and 
the  end  of  the  stick  struck  it  with  such 
impetus  that  it  knocked  the  barrel  over, 
then  flew  out  of  Patrick's  hand  to  the 
right,  who  himself  made  a  spring  the 
other  way,  and  stood  glaring  with  all 
the  rest  at  the  glittering  objects  that 
strewed  the  lawn,  neither  more  nor  less 
than  the  missing  plate. 

Shouts  and  screams  of  delight.  Every- 
body shaking  hands  with  Patrick,  who, 
being  a  consummate  actor,  seemed  dazzled 
and  mystified,  as  one  who  had  succeeded 
far  beyond  his  expectations. 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  they  all  set- 
tled it  in  their  minds  that  the  thieves  had 
been  alarmed,  and  hidden  the  plate  for  a 
time,  intending  to  return  and  fetch  it 
away. 

Mr.  Ormsby  took  the  seer  into  his  study, 
and  gave  him  a  piece  of  paper  stating  that 
for  a  great  service  rendered  to  him  by 
Patrick  O'Rafferty  he  had,  in  the  name 
of  him  and  his,  promised  him  undisturbed 
possession  of  the  farm  so  long  as  he  or  his 
should  farm  it  themselves,  and  pay  the 
present  rent. 

Pat's  modesty  vanished  at  the  squire's 


124 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


gate;  be  bragged  up  and  down  tbe  village, 
and  hencefortb  nobody  disputed  bis  seer- 
sbip  in  tbose  parts. 

But  one  day  tbe  Sassenacb  came  down 
witb  bis  cold  incredulity. 

A  neighbor's  estate,  mortgaged  up  to  tbe 
eyes,  was  sold  under  tbe  hammer,  and  Sir 
Henry  Steele  bought  it,  and  laid  some  of 
it  down  in  grass.  He  was  a  breeder  of 
stock.  He  marked  out  a  park  wall,  and 
did  not  include  a  certain  little  orchard 
and  a  triangular  plot.  The  seer  observed, 
and  applied  for  them.  Sir  Henry,  who 
did  bis  own  business,  received  the  appli- 
cation, noted  it  down,  and  asked  him  for 
a  reference.     He  gave  Squire  ( Irmsby. 

"  I  will  make  inquiries,"  said  Sir  Henry. 
"  Good-morning." 

He  knew  Ormsby  in  London,  and  when 
be  became  his  neighbor  the  Irish  gentle- 
man was  all  hospitality.  One  day  Sir 
Henry  told  him  of  O'Rafferty's  applica- 
tion, and  asked  about  him. 

"  Oh,"  said  I  Irmsby,  "  that  is  our 
"  Your  what'.'" 

"Our  wise  man,  our  diviner  of  secrets; 
and  sum.'  wonderful  things  he  has  done." 
He  then  related  the  loss  of  his  plate  and 
its  supernatural  recovery. 

The  Sassenach  listened  with  a  cold,  in- 
credulous eye  and  a  sardonic  grin. 

Then  the  Irishman  got  hot  and  accumu- 
lated examples. 

Then  the  Sassenach,  with  the  obstinacy 
of  bis  race,  said  he  would  put  these  pre- 
tensions to  tbe  test.  He  had  picked  out 
of  the  various  narratives  that  this  seer 
was  very  fond  of  a  good  dinner,  and  pre- 
tended it  tended  to  enlighten  his  mind;  so 
be  laid  bis  trap  accordingly. 

At  his  request  Patrick  was  informed 
that  next  Tuesday,  at  one  o'clock,  if  he 
chose  to  submit  to  a  fair  test  of  bis  divin- 
ing powers,  the  parcel  of  land  he  had 
asked  for  should  be  let  him  on  easy 
terms. 

Patrick  assented  jauntily.  But  in  his 
secret  soul  he  felt  uneasy  at  having  to 
encounter  this  Sassenach  gentleman.  Sir 
Henry  was  the  fortunate  possessor  of  what 
Pat  was  pleased  to  call  "  a  nasty  glittering 
eye,"  and  over  that  eye  Pat  doubted  his 


ability  to  draw  the  wool  as  he  bad  done 
over  Celtic  orbs. 

However,  be  came  up  to  the  scratch  like 
a  man.  After  all,  he  had  nothing  to  lose 
this  time,  and  he  vowed  to  submit  to  no. 
test  that  was  not  preceded  by  a  good  din- 
ner. He  was  ushered  into  Sir  Henry 
Steele's  study,  and  there  he  found  that 
gentleman  and  Mr.  Ormsby.  One  com- 
fort, there  was  a  cloth  laid,  and  certain 
silver  dishes  on  the  hobs  and  in  the 
fender. 

"  Well,  Mr.  O'Rafferty,"  said  bis  host, 
"  I  believe  you  like  a  good  dinner?" 

"  Thrue  for  you,  sorr,"  said  Pat. 

"  Well,  then,  we  can  combine  business 
with  pleasure;  you  shall  have  a  good  din- 
ner. " 

"Long  life  to  your  honor!" 

"I  cooked  it  for  you  myself." 

"  God  bless  your  honor  for  your  conde- 
scension." 

"You  are  to  eat  the  dinner  first/and 
then  just  tell  me  what  the  meat  is,  and 
the  parcel  of  land  is  yours  on  easy  terms." 

Patrick's  confidence  rose.  "Sure,  thin, 
it  is  a  fair  bargain,"  said  he. 

The  dishes  were  uncovered.     There  were 

vegetables  < ked    most  deliciously;    the 

meat  was  a  chef-d'oeuvre ;    a  sort  of  rich 

it  done   to   a   turn,    and  so   fragrant 

thai  the  very  odor  made  the  mouth  water. 

Patrick  seated  himself,  helped  himself 
and  took  a  mouthful:  that  mouthful  had 
a  double  effect.  He  realized  in  one  and 
the  same  moment  that  this  was  a  more 
heavenly  compound  than  he  had  ever  ex- 
pected  to  taste  upon  earth,  and  that  he 
could  not  and  never  should  divine  what 
bird  or  beast  be  was  eating.  He  looked 
for  the  bones;  there  were  none.  He  .yielded 
himself  to  desperate  enjoyment.  When  he 
bad  nearly  cleaned  the  plate  he  said  that 
even  the  best  cooked  meat  was  none  the 
worse  for  a  quart  of  good  ale  to  wash  it 
down. 

Sir  Henry  Steele  rang  a  bell  and  ordered 
a  quart  of  ale. 

Patrick  enjoyed  this  too,  and  did  not 
hurry;  he  felt  it  was  his  last  dinner  in 
that  bouse,  as  well  as  his  first. 

The  gentlemen  watched  him  and  gave 


"  THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP."      125 


him  time.  But  at  last  Orrnsby  said, 
"Well,  Patrick—" 

Now  Patrick,  while  he  sipped,  had  been 
asking  himself  what  line  he  had  better  take ; 
and  he  had  come  to  a  conclusion  creditable 
to  that  sagacity  and  knowledge  of  human 
nature  he  really  possessed,  and  underrated 
accordingly.  He  would  compliment  the 
gentlemen  on  their  superior  wisdom,  and 
own  he  could  not  throw  dust  in  such  eyes 
as  theirs;  then  he  would  beg  them  not  to 
make  his  humble  neighbors  as  wise  as  they 
were,  but  let  him  still  pass  for  a  wise  man 
in  the  parish,  while  they  laughed  in  their 
superior  sleeves.  To  carry  out  this  he  im- 
pregnated his  brazen  features  with  a  world 
of  comic  humility. 

"And,"  said  he,  in  cajoling  accents, 
"ah,  your  honors,  the  old  fox  made  many 
a  turn,  but  the  dogs  were  too  many  for  him 
at  last." 

What  more  of  self-depreciation  and 
cajolery  he  would  have  added  is  not 
known,  for  Sir  Henry  Steele  broke  in 
loudly,  "Good  Heavens!  Well,  he  is  an 
extraordinary  man.  It  was  an  old  dog- 
fox I  cooked  for  him." 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?"  cried  Ormsby, 
delighted  at  the  success  of  his  country- 
man. 

"  Well,  sir,"  said  Sir  Henry,  whose  emo- 
tions seldom  lasted  long,  "a  bargain's  a 


bargain.  I  let  you  the  orchard  and  field 
for — let  me  see — you  must  bring  me  a  stoat, 
a  weasel,  and  a  pole-cat  every  year.  I 
mean  to  get  up  the  game." 

Mr.  O'Rafferty  first  stared  stupidly,  then 
winked  cunningly,  then  blandly  absorbed 
laudation  and  land;  then  retired  invoking 
solemn  blessings;  then,  being  outside,  exe- 
cuted a  fandango,  and  went  home  on  wings. 
From  that  hour  the  village  could  not  hold 
him.  His  speech  was  of  accumulating 
farms  at  pepper-corn  rents,  till  a  slice  of 
the  county  should  be  his.  To  hear  him, 
he  could  see  through  a  deal  board,  and 
luck  was  his  monopoly.  He  began  to  be 
envied,  and  was  on  the  way  to  be  hated, 
when,  confiding  in  his  star,  he  married 
Norah  Blake,  a  beautiful  girl,  but  a  most 
notorious  vixen. 

Then  the  unlucky  ones  forgave  him  a 
great  deal;  for  sure  wouldn't  Norah  re- 
venge them?  Alas!  the  traitress  fell  in 
love  with  her  husband  after  marriage  and 
let  him  mold  her  into  a  sort  of  angelic 
duck. 

This  was  the  climax.  So  Paddy  Luck 
is  now  numbered  among  the  lasting  insti- 
tutions of  ould  Ireland  (if  any). 

May  he  live  till  the  skirts  of  his  coat 
knock  his  brains  out,  and  him  dancing  an 
Irish  fling  to  "  the  wind  that  shakes  the 
barley !" 


THERE'S    MANY    A    SLIP    TWIXT    THE 
CUP    AND    THE    LIP." 


CHAPTER  I. 

Mr.  Samuel  Sutton,  wool-stapler,  had 
a  large  business  in  Frome,  inherited  from 
his  father,  and  enlarged  by  himself ;  also  a 
nest-egg  of  £150,000  invested  at  four  per 
cent  in  solid  securities.  He  lived  clear 
out  of  the  town  in  a  large  house  built  by 
himself,  and  called  "Merino  Lodge,"  with 


lawn,  gardens,  conservatories,  stables,  all 
of  them  models.  He  loved  business,  and 
spent  his  day  in  the  office;  he  loved  his 
wife,  and  enjoyed  his  evenings  at  home. 
But  this  life  of  calm  content  was  broken 
up  in  one  month :  his  wife  sickened  and 
died,  leaving  him  utterly  desolate  and 
wretched.  No  child  to  reflect  her  beloved 
features,  and  no  live  thing  to  cherish  but 


126 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


her  favorite  dog,  an  orphan  girl  she  had 
taken  into  the  house  eight  years  before, 
and  the  immortal  memory  of  a  watchful 
and  unselfish  affection. 

Under  this  stunning  blow  messages  of 
consolation  poured  in  upon  him,  many  of 
them  delicately  and  admirably  worded,  all 
written  with  a  certain  sympathy,  but  with 
dry  eyes.  His  very  servants  spoke  with 
bated  breath  and  sorrowful  looks  before 
him,  but  he  heard  the  squawks  of  the 
women  and  the  guffaws  of  the  men  out 
in  the  yard.  Only  one  creature  beside 
himself  suffered.  It  was  his  wife's  pro- 
tegee, Rebecca  Barnes.  For  many  a  day 
this  girl,  like  himself,  never  smiled,  and 
often  burst  into  tears  all  in  a  moment  over 
her  work.  This  was  not  lost  on  the  mourner; 
hitherto  he  had  hardly  noticed  this  humble 
figure;  but  now  lie  Looked  at  her  with  in- 
terest, and  told  her,  once  for  all,  he  would 
be  a  friend  to  her,  as  his  beloved  wile  hail 
been. 

The  young  woman  thus  distinguished 
was  attractive;  she  was  tall  and  straight, 
but  not  bon.y,  nor  nipped  in  at  the  waist. 
She  had  the  face  of  an  English  rural  beauty, 
light  brown  hair,  a  very  white  skin,  dark 
-ray  eyes,  and  a  complexion  not  divided 
into  red  and  white,  but  with  a  light  brick- 
dusty  color,  very  sweet  and  healthy,  dif- 
fused all  over  two  oval  cheeks;  a  large 
but  shapely  mouth  and  beautiful  teeth 
made  her  winning;  a  little  cocked-up  nose 
spoiled  her  for  a  beauty;  and  she  might 
be  summed   up  as  comeliness  in  person. 

Educated  by  a  lady  with  great  good 
sense,  she  could  read  aloud  fluently  and 
with  propriety,  could  write  like  a  clerk, 
cook  well,  make  pickles  and  preserves, 
sweep,  dust,  cut  and  sew  dresses,  iron 
and  get  up  lace  and  linen;  but  could  not 
play  the  piano  nor  dance  a  polka. 

Mr?.  Sutton  always  intended  her  to  be 
housekeeper;  and  the  widower  now  told 
her  to  try  and  qualify  herself  in  time;  she 
was  too  young  at  preent. 

Months  rolled  on,  but  Samuel  Sutton's 
loneliness  did  not  abate.  He  had  onl}- 
one  relation  who  interested  him,  Joe 
Newton,  son  of  a  deceased  sister,  a  bold 
Eton  boy  he  had  often  tipped.     Joe  was 


now  at  Oxford,  and  Mr.  Sutton  invited 
him  for  the  long  vacation,  and  prepared 
to  like  him. 

While  he  is  on  the  road  let  us  attempt 
his  character — at  that  period :  a  goodish 
scholar,  excellent  athlete;  rowed  six  in 
the  college  boat,  and  was  promised  a 
place  in  the  University  Eleven  for  fair 
defense,  hard  hitting,  and  exceptional 
throwing. 

He  used  to  back  himself  against  both  the 
universities  to  fling  the  hammer  and  con- 
strue Demosthenes ;  the  college  tutor  heard, 
and  remonstrated.  "It  was  not  the  thing 
at  Oxford  to  brag;  why,  Stilwell  made  a 
bundled  and  fifteen  against  Surry  the 
other  day.  but  be  only  said  be  had  been 
very  lucky.  That  is  the  form  at  present," 
said  the  excellent  tutor,  stroke  of  the  uni- 
versity  boat  in  his  day.  Joe  explained 
largely.  Of  course  he  knew  there  were 
two  men  who  could  beat  him  at  throwing 
the  hammer,  one  Oxford,  one  Cambridge, 
and  a  lot  who  could  eclipse  him  at  con- 
struing Greek  orators.  "  But  you  see, 
mi.""  said  lie,  Blyly,  "the  fellows  that  can 
construe  Demosthenes  can't  fling  the  ham- 
mer; and  the  happy  pair  that  can  take  the 
shine  out  of  me  at  the  hammer  can't  con- 
strue Demosthenes.  I  can  do  both  after  a 
fashion." 

"Oh,"  said  the  tutor,  "that  alters  the 
case.  So  it  was  only  an  enigma;  sounded 
like  a  brag." 

Add  to  the  virtues  indicated  above, 
pugilism,  wrestling,  good  spirits,  six  feet, 
broad  shoulders,  abundance  of  physical 
and  a  want  of  moral  courage,  and  behold 
Joe  Newton,  aged  twenty-one. 

He  came  to  "Merino  Lodge,"  and  filled 
the  place  with  sudden  vitality.  He  rowed 
everybody  on  the  lake;  armed  both  sexes 
with  fishing  rods;  mowed  and  rolled  a 
paddock  into  a  cricket-ground ;  organized 
matches  between  county  clubs;  drew  on 
his  uncle  for  copious  luncheons;  chaffed, 
talked,  and  enlivened  all  the  family  and 
neighborhood,  and  gazed  at  Rebecca 
Barnes  till  he  troubled  her  peace,  and 
set  her  heart  in  a  flutter. 

One  fine  summer  evening  there  was  a 
harvest-home  supper,  and  the  rustics  drank 


"THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP."       127 


the  farmer's  cider  without  stint.  Return- 
ing from  this  banquet  a  colossal  carter  met 
Rebecca  Barnes  and  proceeded  to  some 
very  rough  courtship.  She  gave  him  the 
slip,  and  ran  and  screamed  a  little.  It 
was  near  the  cricket-grouud  that  Joe  was 
rolling  for  a  match  to  come  off.  He 
heard  the  signals  of  distress,  and  vaulted 
over  the  gate  in  front  of  Rebecca,  just  as 
the  carter  caught  her,  and  she  screamed 
violently. 

"Come,  drop  that,  my  man,"  said  Joe, 
good-humoredly  enough. 

"Who  be  you?"  inquired  the  rustic,  dis- 
dainfully, and  challenged  him  to  fight. 

"No,  don't,  sir;  pray  don't,"  cried  Re- 
becca. "  He  is  bigger  than  you,  and  he 
thrashes  them  all." 

Joseph  hesitated  out  of  good  nature. 
The  bully  called  him  a  coward,  and  took 
off  his  coat.     Joseph  said,  apologetically — 

"  He  wants  a  lesson.  I  won't  detain 
you  a  minute.  Now,  then,  sir,  let  us  get 
it  over;"  and  without  taking  off  his  coat, 
put  himself  in  his  favorite  attitude.  The 
carter  made  a  rush,  got  it  right  and  left 
as  if  from  Heaven,  and  stood  staring  with 
two  black  eyes;  came  on  again  more  cau- 
tiously, but  while  endeavoring  a  tremen- 
dous rounder  that  would  probably  have 
finished  the  business  his  way,  received  a 
dazzler  with  the  left  followed  by  a  heavy 
right-hander  on  the  throat  that  felled  him 
like  a  tree. 

Joe  then  gave  his  arm  to  Rebecca,  who 
was  trembling  all  over.  She  took  it  with 
both  hands,  and  an  inclination  to  droop  her 
head  on  his  shoulder,  which  made  the  walk 
home  slow,  amusing,  and  delightful  to  Joe. 

After  that  evening  Rebecca,  who  was 
already  on  the  verge  of  danger,  began  to 
be  divinely  happy  and  unreasonably  de- 
pressed by  turns.  She  was  always  peep- 
ing at  Joe,  and  coming  near  him,  and 
avoiding  him ;  and  then  he  took  to  spoon- 
ing upon  her,  and  she  was  coy,  but  flut- 
tered with  wild  hopes,  and  thrilled  with 
innocent  joys. 

At  last  energetic  Joe  spooned  on  her  so 
openly  that  Mr.  Sutton  observed. 

He  made  short  work  with  both  culprits. 

"Rebecca,"  said  he,  "be  good  enough  to 


keep  that  young  fool  at  a  distance.  Joe,  let 
that  girl  alone.  She  is  only  a  servant,  after 
all,  and  I  will  not  have  her  head  turned." 
Rebecca  blushed,  and  cried,  and  tried  to 
obey. 

Joe  affected  compliance,  got  impatient, 
and  one  day  watched  for  Rebecca,  caught 
her  away  from  home,  declared  his  love  for 
her,  and  urged  her  to  run  away  with  him. 
The  instinct  of  virtue  supplied  the  place 
of  experience,  and  she  rejected  him  with 
indignation,  and  after  that  kept  out  of  his 
way  in  earnest. 

However,  before  he  left  he  owned  his 
fault,  begged  her  pardon,  and  asked  her 
to  wait  for  him  till  he  got  his  family  liv- 
ing, and  was  independent  of  everybody. 
This  was  another  matter,  and  female 
love  soon  forgives  male  audacity.  Reck- 
less Joe  overcame  her  reasonable  misgiv- 
ings, and  fed  her  passion  by  letters  for 
three  whole  years,  and  she  refused  young 
Farmer  Mortlock,  an  excellent  match  in 
every  way. 

By  and  by  Joe's  letters  cooled,  and  be- 
came rare.  He  even  declined  his  uncle's 
invitations  on  pretense  of  reading  with 
a    tutor  in  Wales. 

Then  Rebecca  paled  and  pined,  and 
divined  that  she  was  abandoned.  Soon 
cruel  suspense  gave  way  to  certainty. 
Joe  was  ordained  priest,  took  the  family 
living,  and  married  Melusina  Florence 
Tiverton,  a  young  lady  of  fashion,  high 
connections,  and  eight  thousand  pounds, 
which  before  the  marriage  was  settled  on 
her  and  her  children. 

Mr.  Sutton  announced  this  to  his  friends 
with  satisfaction,  and  he  even  told  it  to 
Rebecca  Barnes,  whom  he  happened  to 
find  at  a  passage  window  sewing  buttons 
on  his  shirts.  He  was  fond  of  Joe,  and 
thought  his  good  marriage  ought  to  please 
everybody,  and  so  he  was  in  a  good  humor, 
and  told  Rebecca  all  about  it,  and  that  he 
had  promised  the  happy  pair  a  thousand 
pounds  to  start  with. 

Rebecca  turned  cold  as  a  stone,  and  kept 
on  sewing,  but  slower  and  slower  every 
stitch. 

"  Well,  you  might  wish  them  joy,"  said 
Mr.  Sutton. 


128 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


"  I  wish  —  them  —  every  —  happiness," 
said  Rebecca,  slowly  and  faintly,  and 
went  on  sewing  mechanically. 

Mr.  Sutton  looked  at  her  inquiringly, 
but  had  already  said  more  to  her  than  was 
his  custom  at  that  period  of  her  service; 
so  he  went  about  his  business. 

She  sewed  on  still,  feeling  ver}T  cold,  and 
soon  the  patient  tears  began  to  trickle, 
and  then  she  put  her  work  aside,  and  laid 
her  brow  against  the  corner  of  the  shutter, 
that  the  tears  might  run  their  course  with- 
out spoiling  her  master's  collars  and  cuffs. 

Not  long  after  this  the  housekeeper  left 
and  Mr.  Sutton  Bent  for  Rebecca.  "You 
are  young,"  In-  said,  half  hesitating,  "but 
you  are  steady  and  faithful."  Then  he 
turned  his  back  on  her  and  looked  at  his 
wife's  portrait.  "Yes,  Jane,"  said  he, 
"we  can  hut  try  her."  Then,  without 
turning  from  the  picture,  "Rebecca,  take 
the  housekeeper's  keys  and  let  us  see  how 
you  can  govern  my  houa 

"I  will  try,  sir,"  said  she;  then  courte- 
sied  and  lefl  the  room  with  the  tear  in  her 
eye  at  him  consulting  the  picture  of  her 
they  both  1'  >\  ed. 

Rebecca  Barnes  had  made  many  obser- 
vations upon  servants  and  their  ways,  and 
entered  on  office  with  some  fixed  ideas  of 
economy  and  management. 

She  did  not  hurry  matters,  but  by  de- 
grees  waste  was  quietly  put  down,  the 
servants  were  compelled,  contrary  to  their 
nature,  to  return  everything  to  its  place; 
the  weekly  bills  decreased,  and  yet  the 
donations  to  worthy  people  increased. 

She  had  held  the  keys,  and  nearly 
doubled  their  number,  about  eight  months, 
when  Mr.  Sutton  gave  her  an  order. 
"Barnes,"  said  he,  "Joe  and  his  wife 
are  coming  to  see  me  next  Wednesday 
at  five  o'clock.  Get  everything  ready  for 
them  at  once — give  them  the  best  bedroom 
— and  make  them  comfortable." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  she,  and  went  about  it 
directly. 

She  summoned  maids,  saw  fires  lit,  beds 
and  blankets  put  down  to  them,  not  sheets 
only,  took  linen  out  of  her  lavender  cup- 
board,  ordered    flowers,   and    secured  the 


comfort  of  the  visitors,  though  heats  and 
chills  pervaded  her  own  bod}7  by  turns  at 
the  thought  of  receiving  Joe  Newton  and 
the  woman  he  had  preferred    to   herself. 

"She  is  beautiful,  no  doubt,"  thought 
Rebecca.  "I  wonder  whether  she  knows? 
Oh,  no,  surely  he  would  never  tell  her.  He 
would  be  ashamed."  The  mere  doubt, 
though,  made  her  red  and  then  pale. 

The  pair  arrived  with  their  own  maid; 
a  house-maid  under  orders  showed  them  to 
their  rooms;  Rebecca  Barnes  kept  out  of 
their  way  at  first,  and  steeled  herself  by 
degrees  to  the  inevitable  encounter. 

She  took  her  opportunity  next  day,  and 
approached  Mrs.  Newton  first  with  a  civil 
inquiry  if  she  could  do  anything  for  her. 

"  You  are  the — the — "  drawled  the  lady. 

"The  housekeeper,  madam." 

"  The  housekeeper?  You  are  very  young 
("or  that." 

"  X"t  so  young  as  I  look,  perhaps;  and 
I  have  been  sixteen  years  in  the  house." 
She  then  renewed  her  question. 

"Not  at  present,"  was  the  reply.  "I 
will  send   for  you   if  1  require  anything." 

The  words  were  colorless  in  themselves, 
hut  there  was  a  hard,  unfriendly,  and  su- 
perior tone  in  them  rather  out  of  place  in 
a  house  where  she  was  a  guest,  and  a  new 
one,  and  kindly  civility  just  being  shown 
her. 

Downstairs  the  lady  did  not  charm.  She 
desired  to  please,  but  had  not  the  tact.  Her 
voice  w.is  high-pitched,  and  she  could  not 
listen.  Her  husband,  however,  was  in  ecs- 
tasy over  her,  and  rather  wearied  his  uncle 
with  descanting  on  her  perfections. 

Things  went  on  well  enough  until  she 
got  a  little  more  familiar  with  Uncle  Sam- 
uel ;  and  then,  looking  on  him  as  virtually 
a  bachelor,  she  must  needs  advise  him  from 
the  heights  of  her  matronly  experience.  She 
told  him  his  housekeeper  was  too  young  for 
the  place. 

"She  is  young,"  said  he,  "but  she  has 
experience,  and  my  dear  wife  taught  her." 

Instead  of  listening  to  that,  and  saying, 
"  Ah,  that  alters  the  case,"  as  most  men  or 
women  would,  this  tactless  young  lady  went 
on  to  say  that  she  was  too  young  and  good- 
looking  to  be  about  a  widower.     It  would 


'  THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP."      129 


set  people  talking,  and  so  she  strongly  ad- 
vised him  to  change  her  for  some  staid, 
respectable  person. 

"Mind  your  own  business,  my  dear," 
replied  the  wool-stapler,  with  such  con- 
temptuous resolution  that  she  held  her 
tongue  directly,  and  contented  herself 
just  then  with  hating  Rebecca  Barnes  for 
this  repulse.  But  when  she  got  hold  of 
Joe,  she  scolded  him  well  for  the  affront; 
she  never  saw  she  had  drawn  it  on  herself. 
It  was  not  in  her  nature  to  see  a  fault  in 
herself  under  any  circumstances  whatever. 

Joe,  physical  hero,  moral  coward,  dared 
not  say  a  word,  but  took  his  unjust  pun- 
ishment meekly. 

However,  after  dinner,  owning  to  him- 
self that  this  infallible  creature  had  made 
a  blunder,  he  set  himself  to  remove  any  ill 
impression.  He  descanted  on  her  virtues; 
above  all,  her  generosity  and  her  zeal  for 
her  friend's  interests,  etc. 

Uncle  Sutton  got  sick  of  his  marital 
mendacity,  and  said,  "Now,  Joe,  don't 
you  be  an  uxorious  ass.  She  is  your  wife, 
and  she  is  well  enough ;  but  she  is  no  para- 
gon."    And  so  he  shut  him  up. 

They  stayed  a  fortnight  and  then  went 
home.  As  Melusina  had  intruded  her 
opinion  on  Rebecca,  Mr.  Sutton,  who 
came  more  into  contact  with  the  latter 
now  she  was  housekeeper,  had  the  sly 
curiosity  to  ask  her,  in  a  half  careless 
way,  what  she  thought  of  Joe's  wife. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Rebecca,  wiser  and 
more  on  her  guard  than  Melusina,  "  he 
might  have  done  better,  I  think,  and  he 
might  have  done  worse." 

"Voice  too  shrill  for  me,"  said  the  mas- 
ter. "  But  I  suppose  he  took  her  for  her 
good  looks." 

"Good  looks,  sir?  What,  with  a  beak 
for  a  nose,  and  a  slit  for  a  mouth?" 

Mr.  Sutton  laughed.  "  How  you  women 
do  admire  one  another.  Stop;  now  I  think 
of  it,  this  is  ungrateful  of  you,  for  she  told 
me  you  were  too  good-looking." 

"Too  good-looking!"  said  Rebecca. 
"What  did  she  mean  by  that?  Ah!  she 
wanted  you  to  part  with  me." 

"Stuff  and  nonsense,"  said  he;  but  he 
colored  a  little  at  the  abominable  shrewd- 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


ness  of  females  in  reading  one  another  at 
half  a  word. 

Rebecca  was  too  discreet  to  press  the 
matter;  she  pretended  to  accept  the  dis- 
avowal, but  she  did  not.  Joe's  wife  to 
come  into  the  house  on  her  first  visit,  and 
instantly  endeavor  to  turn  out  the  poor  girl 
that  had  been  there  from  a  child  ! 

"  And  he  could  look  on  and  let  her,"  said 
she;  "he  that  thought  it  little  to  defend  me 
against  that  giant.  Men  are  so  strange, 
and  hard  to  understand." 

Next  year  Joe  came  by  himself,  and 
charmed  everybody.  Rebecca  at  last 
kept  out  of  his  way,  for  she  found  the 
old  affection  reviving,  and  was  fright- 
ened. 

Two  years  more,  and  the  pair  came  on 
a  visit  at  one  day's  notice.  But  all  was 
ready  for  them  in  that  well-ordered  house. 

The  motive  of  this  hasty  visit  soon  tran- 
spired. They  had  spent  more  than  double 
their  income  since  they  married,  owed  two 
thousand  pounds,  and  had  an  execution  in 
the  house. 

Uncle  Sutton  was  displeased.  "Debt  is 
dishonest,"  said  he.  "We  can  all  cut  our 
coat  according  to  our  cloth."  But  he  ended 
by  saying,  "  Well,  make  out  a  list  of  all  the 
debts.  Try  if  you  can  tell  the  truth  now, 
both  of  you,  and  put  them  all  down." 

By  this  time  Rebecca  had  become  his 
accountant  in  private  matters,  and  her 
fidelity  and  discretion  had  gradually 
earned  his  confidence.  He  actually  con- 
sulted her  on  the  situation,  not  that  she 
could  have  influenced  him  against  his  own 
judgment.  No  man  was  more  thoroughly 
master  than  Sam  Sutton.  But  he  was  a 
solitaiy  man,  and  it  is  hard  to  be  always 
silent. 

"  Bad  business,  Rebecca.  Now  I  won- 
der what  you  would  do  in  my  place?" 

"Do,  sir?  Why,  pay  Master  Joe's  debts 
directly.  You  will  never  miss  it.  But 
when  I  had  paid  them,  I'd  tell  her  not  to 
come  begging  here  again  with  a  fortune 
on  her  back." 

"Come,  come,"  said  Sutton,  "she  is 
dressed  plainer  than  any  lad}'  in  Frome. 
I  will  say  that  for  her." 

"  La !  sir,  wdiere  are  your  eyes?     What, 

'5  * 


130 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


with  those  furs  and  that  old  point  lace? 
Three  hundred  guineas  never  bought  them. 
There  are  no  such  furs  in  Frome.  I've 
seen  their  fellows  in  London.  They  are 
Russian  sables,  the  finest  to  be  had  for 
money.  And  look  at  her  fingers,  crippled 
with  diamonds  and  rubies.  There's  four 
or  five  hundred  more,  and  that  is  how 
Master  Joe's  money  goes.  I  pity  him; 
he  couldn't  have  done  worse  if  he  had 
married — a  servant." 

Mr.  Sutton  looked  very  grave.  How- 
ever, he  sold  out  and  drew  the  check. 
But,  unfortunately,  instead  of  lecturing 
the  wife,  be  took  the  husband  to  task. 
He  said  he  was  sorry  to  see  Mrs.  Joseph 
so  extravagant  in  dress. 

"My  dear  uncle,"  replied  he,  "why,  she 
is  anything  but  that;  she  is  most  self-deny- 
ing. 1  am  the  only  one  to  blame,  believe 
me." 

"Now,  you  uxorious  humbug,"  cried 
Uncle  Samuel,  "can't  you  see  she  has 
got  three  hundred  guineas  on  her  back 
in  lace  and  sable  furs,  and  as  much  more 
on  her  fingers?     Where  are  your  eyes?" 

Joe  looked  sheepish.  "I  am  no  judge 
of  these  tliuigs,  uncle.  But  I  feel  sure 
you  are  mistaken." 

"  No,  I  am  not  mistaken.  Everybody 
knows  the  value  of  sables  and  diamonds." 

Joe  retailed  this  conversation  very  tim- 
idly to  his  wife,  not  to  make  her  less  ex- 
travagant, but  more  cautious  under  Uncle 
Sutton's  eye.  He  took  care  to  draw  that 
distinction  for  the  sake  of  peace. 

His  finesse  was  wasted.  "It's  the  wo- 
man," said  she,  as  quick  as  lightning. 

"What  woman?" 

"The  woman  Barnes.  She  has  told  him 
— to  make  mischief." 

"  No,  no !  the  old  fox  has  got  eyes  of  his 
own." 

"  Not  for  sables.     It  is  the  woman." 

"Well,  dear,  I  don't  think  so;  but  if  it 
is,  then  I  wouldn't  give  her  the  chance 
again." 

"  Me  take  off  my  sables  because  a  wo- 
man is  envious  of  them?  What  do  you 
think  I  bought  them  for?  I'll  wear  them 
all  the  more — ten  times  more." 

"  Hush !  hush  !"  implored  the  weak  hus- 


band, for  the  peacock  voice,  raised  in  de- 
fiance, was  audible  through  doors  at  a 
considerable  distance. 

All  this  mortified  Mrs.  Joe's  vanity, 
and  that  was  her  stronger  passion.  She 
came  no  more  to  "  Merino  Lodge." 

But  she  sent  her  husband  once  a  year, 
with  orders  to  bring  home  some  money 
and  get  rid  of  the  woman  Barnes. 

He  was  to  tell  Mr.  Sutton  Barnes  was  a 
mercenary  woman  and  kept  his  wife  away. 
But  Joe's  subservience  relaxed  when  he 
got  to  "Merino  Lodge,"  and  his  pea-hen 
could  not  watch  him.  He  made  himself 
agreeable  to  ever3"body. 

( <ne  fine  day  he  discovered  that  Rebecca 
was  consulted  in  matters  of  domestic  ac- 
count, and  that  he  owed  the  check  he  al- 
ways took  home  in  some  degree  to  her 
good  word  as  well  as  to  his  uncle's  affec- 
tion. Upon  that  he  forgot  he  was  to  un- 
dermine her,  and  began  to  spoon  a  little  on 
her;  but  this  was  received  with  a  sort  of 
shudder  that  brought  him  to  his  senses. 

So  the  years  rolled  on,  confirming  the 
virtues  and  the  faults  of  all  these  char- 
acters,  for  nothing  stands  still. 

Joe  Newton  was  forty-one,  and  looked 
forty-five;  Rebecca  Barnes  thirty-eight, 
and  looked  twenty-five.  Mrs.  Newton 
was  forty,  and  looked  fifty;  and  Uncle 
Sutton,  though  fifty-seven,  looked  five- 
and-forty,  thanks  to  sober  living,  good 
humor,  and  a  fine  constitution. 

Joe's  inheritance  seemed  distant,  and  he 
was  always  in  debt,  though  often  relieved. 

But  who  can  foretell?  The  stout  wool- 
stapler  was  seized  with  a  mysterious 
malady,  frequent  sickness,  constant  de- 
pression. He  struggled  manfully,  went 
to  his  office  ill,  came  back  no  better;  but 
at  last  had  to  stay  at  home. 

By  and  by  he  took  to  his  bed. 

Rebecca  wrote  to  Joe  Newton.  He  came 
and  found  his  uncle  eternally  sick,  and  turn- 
ing yellow. 

Joe  spoke  hopefully,  said  it  was  only 
jaundice,  but  went  away  and  told  a  differ- 
ent tale  at  home. 

There  he  and  his  wife,  demoralized  by 
debt,  discussed  the  approaching  death  of 


'•  THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP."      131 


a  great  benefactor  in  hypocritical  terms, 
through  which  eager  expectation  pierced. 

"  You  are  sure  he  has  not  made  a  fresh 
will?     That  woman  has  his  ear." 

"Make  your  mind  easy,  dear.  He  told 
me  all  about  it  himself  not  six  months  ago. 
He  leaves  us  and  our  children  all  his  money, 
except  £5,000  to  Rebecca  Barnes." 

"Five  thousand  pounds  to  a  servant!" 

"And  only  £200,000  to  us,"  said  Joe, 
hazarding  a  little  humor. 

"Tied  up,  I'll  be  bound." 

"  Well,  dear, "  said  Joe,  "  even  if  it  should 
be,  our  children  will  benefit,  and  we  shall 
have  enough." 

"Five  thousand  pounds  to  that  woman! 
And  not  tied  up,  of  course." 

Joe  could  have  told  her  from  his  uncle's 
own  lips  why  he  was  to  have  a  life-inter- 
est only  in  that  large  fortune.  "  Your  wife 
is  vain,  selfish,  and  extravagant,  and  you 
are  her  slave.  She  shall  not  waste  my 
money  as  she  has  yours.  It  is  all  se- 
cured to  you  and  your  children." 

But  Joe  preferred  peace  to  admonition, 
and  kept  his  uncle's  treasons  to  himself. 

Mr.  Sutton  was  tenderly  nursed  night 
and  day  hy  Rebecca  Barnes  and  a  young 
orphan  girl  she  had  brought  into  the 
house,  as  she  herself  had  been  brought 
thirty  years  ago.  He  was  attended  by 
Dr.  Stevenson,  an  old  friend. 

But  neither  physic  nor  nursing  could 
stop  the  fatal  sickness  that  prostrated  the 
strong  man. 

At  last  Dr.  Stevenson,  and  a  physician 
he  had  summoned  from  London,  told  Re- 
becca to  prepare  for  the  worst.  He  must 
die  of  inanition,  and  that  shortly. 

Rebecca  sent  a  mounted  messenger  to 
Joe:  "Come  at  once,  or  you  will  not  see 
him  alive." 

Joe  sent  back  word  he  would  come  by 
the  first  train. 

But  before  he  went  his  wife  gave  him 
instructions.  "Now,  mind,  if  he  knows 
you,  and  can  speak,  do  nothing.  But  if 
he  is  insensible,  you  must  begin  to  think 
of  your  interests;  you  are  executor;  you 
told  me  so." 

"  One  of  them." 


"  And  the  one  on  the  spot.  There  are 
quantities  of  plate  and  valuables  in  the 
house.  You  must  fix  seals  and  ask  Barnes 
for  her  keys." 

"Will  not  that  be  premature?" 

"  No,  stupid;  it  will  be  just  in  time." 

"Hum!  she  has  been  a  faithful  servant. 
I  am  afraid  it  would  wound  her  feelings." 

"The  feelings  of  a  menial?  Besides, 
there  are  two  ways  of  doing  these  things. 
Of  course  you  will  flatter  her,  and  say  you 
only  want  to  relieve  her  of  responsibility. 
But  mind  you  secure  her  keys,  or  I'll  never 
forgive  you." 

"Very  well,"  said  Joe.  "I  suppose  you 
are  right;  you  always  are." 

He  reached  the  Lodge  and  Rebecca  met 
him  with  a  despairing  cry :  "  Oh,  Mr. 
Joseph !"  and  led  the  way  to  the  sick- 
room. 

They  found  Mr.  Sutton  yellow,  and  yet 
cadaverous,  gasping  and  almost  rattling 
for  breath. 

"He  is  dying,"  said  Joe,  awestruck. 
"He  will  not  live  an   hour." 

Presently  the  patient  gasped  desperately 
and  tried  to  raise  himself. 

"  Lift  him !"  cried  Rebecca,  and  seized 
a  basin,  while  Joe's  strong  arm  raised 
him. 

Instantly  there  burst  from  the  patient  a 
copious  discharge  of  black  blood,  or  what 
looked  like  it. 

Joe  turned  pale,  and  cried,  "  Oh,  it  is 
the  substance  of  the  liver,"  and  he  felt 
faint  at  the  sight. 

Rebecca  stood  firm.  She  gave  the  basin 
quickly  to  the  girl,  and  filled  Joe  a  glass- 
ful of  neat  brandy.  He  tossed  it  off,  and 
it  revived  him. 

They  laid  the  patient  back  gently,  and 
Rebecca  felt  his  pulse.  It  was  scarcely 
perceptible. 

"  He  is  going,"  she  said.  Then,  looking 
round  in  despair,  she  seized  a  tablespoon, 
filled  it  with  brandy  slightly  diluted,  and 
opening  his  mouth,  placed  the  spoon  at  the 
root  of  the  tongue,  and  so  got  the  contents 
down  his  throat. 

As  he  retained  it,  she  repeated  the  dose 
three  times. 

The    patient   lay   motionless,    no  longer 


132 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


gasping,  but  just  faintly  breathing,  as 
men  do  before  life's  little  candle  flickers 
out. 

They  sat  down  on  each  side  of  him  in 
silence.  He  had  been  a  good  friend  to 
both. 

By  and  by  Joe's  dinner  was  announced. 
He  asked  Rebecca  to  come  down  and  eat  a 
morsel  with  him. 

Rebecca  was  hospitable,  but  could  not 
leave  the  moribund  even  for  a  moment. 
"No,"  said  she,  "I  saw  her  die,  and  I 
must  see  him  die." 

Joe  assured  her  he  would  not  die  till 
night,  and  said  he  could  not  eat  alone. 

Accustomed  to  oblige,  Rebecca  con- 
sented, though  unwillingly.  She  sum- 
moned an  elderly  woman  thai  was  in  the 
house,  and  hade  her  watch  him  with  the 
young  girl,  and  send  down  to  her  the 
moment   there  was  any  change. 

Thin  she  went  reluctantly  and  sat  down 
opposite  Joseph  Newton,  pale  and  woe  be 
gone.  He  had  recovered  himself,  and  ate 
a  tolerable  dinner.  She  tried,  out  of  com- 
plaisance,  but  could  only  gel  a  morsel  or 
two  down. 

After  a  hasty  meal  and  two  glasses  of 
port,  the  Rev.  Joseph  Newton  opened  his 
commission.  He  began  as  directed.  He 
dilated  upon  her  long  and  faithful  service, 
and  then  told  her  he  knew  she  was  not  for- 
gotten, or  he  would  have  felt  hound  to  take 
care  of  her. 

While  he  delivered  these  sugar-plums 
he  did  not  look  her  in  the  face,  and  so 
he  did  not  observe  that  her  eye  was  fixed 
on  him  and  never  moved. 

Having  thus  prepared  the  way,  he  pro- 
ceeded in  a  briefer  style  to  say  that  he  was 
bis  uncle's  executor,  and  a  great  responsi- 
bility was  now  about  to  fall  on  him;  un- 
fortunateh-  he  could  not  stay  here  all  night 
to  discharge  those  sad  duties,  so  perhaps  it 
would  be  as  well  to  intrust  him  with  her 
keys  before  he  left. 

Then  Rebecca,  who  had  hitherto  been 
keenly  observant  and  silent,  said,  very 
quietly,  "Give  you  my  keys,  sir?  What! 
do  you  mistrust  me?" 

"Of  course  not;  my  only  object  is  to 
relieve   you   of  so  great  a  responsibility, 


where  there  are  so  many  servants,  and  so 
many  valuables  about." 

"  Valuables  about?  That  is  not  my  way, 
sir.  There  is  nothing  loose  in  this  house 
more  than  I  can  keep  my  eye  on." 

"An  excellent  system,"  said  Joe  warm- 
ly. "  I  promise  to  follow  it.  But,  to  do 
so,  I  must  have  an  executor's  power. 
Come,  Rebecca,  I  must  return  by  the 
five  o'clock  train;  please  oblige  me  with 
your  keys;  the  places  that  have  none  3Tou 
and  I  will  seal  up  together." 

Rebecca  Barnes  rose  from  the  table  so 
straight  she  seemed  six  feet  high,  and  the 
eyes  that  hail  watched  him  like  a  cat  from 
the  first  syllalile  he  had  uttered  Hashed 
lightning  at  him. 

"You  have  spoken  a  woman's  mind; 
take  a  woman's  answer.  What!  yen 
couldn't  wait  till  the  breath  was  out  of 
thai  poor,  dear  body  before  you  must  lay 
your  greed}'  hands  upon  hi-  goods!" 

Joe  rose  in  his  turn.  "  Rebecca,  you 
yourself." 

"'  No,  1  remember  too  well.  Twenty 
years  ago  you  did  your  best  to  ruin  me; 
and  when  you  couldn't,  you  trilled  with 
my  affections,  held  me  in  hand  for  years, 
and  flung  me  away  without  one  grain  of 
pity — you  broke  my  heart  and  made  me  a 
servant  for  life.  Now  you  insult  the  faith- 
ful servant,  you  that  were  false  to  the 
faithful  lover.  Trust  you  with  my  keys, 
you  false-hearted —  No,  sir."  And  she 
folded  her  arms  superbly.  "Go  back  to 
your  wife,  and  tell  her  if  she  wants  to  rob 
him  she  must  kill  him  first,  and  nietoo; 
for  while  he  lives  I  am  mistress  of  this 
house,  and  she  and  you  are — nobody." 

Then  she  turned  her  back  on  him  as 
only  a  tall,  disdainful  woman  can,  and 
flew  wildly  upstairs  to  her  dying  master. 


CHAPTER  II. 

After  all,  once  in  twenty  years  is  not 
often  to  vent  one's  outraged  feelings,  and 


"  THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP."       133 


those  who  smother  their  fiery  wrongs  too 
long  owe  nature  an  explosion. 

But  Rebecca  Barnes,  though  wild  with 
passion,  was  by  nature  anything  but  a 
virago.  So,  even  as  she  flew  up  the 
stairs,  the  rain  followed  the  thunder,  and 
it  was  in  a  wild  distress,  not  fury,  she 
darted  into  her  master's  room,  hurried 
the  other  women  out  of  it,  and  flung 
herself  on  her  knees  by  his  side.  "  Oh, 
master !  master !"  she  cried,  "  is  it  come 
to  this?  They  wish  you  dead.  They 
want  your  plate,  they  want  your  china, 
they  want  your  money;  they  don't  want 
you.  For  all  the  good  you  have  done, 
only  one  poor  woman  will  shed  a  tear 
for  you."  Then  she  began  to  mumble 
his  hand  and  wet  it  with  her  honest 
tears. 

"Now  I  understand  my  dream,"  said  a 
calm,  faint  voice  that  seemed  to  come  from 
the  other  world. 

Rebecca  sprang  to  her  feet  with  a  scream 
and  eyed  him  keenly. 

"  You  are  better?" 

"  I  am.  There  was  something  growing 
inside  me.  I  always  said  so.  It  has 
broken;    I  feel  lighter  now." 

Rebecca  flung  herself  on  her  knees 
again.  "Oh,  master!  then  don't  give  in. 
Try,  try,  try,  and  you'll  get  well.  If  you 
won't  get  well  to  please  poor  me,  do  pray 
get  well  to  spite  those  heartless  creatures. 
They  couldn't  wait.  They  demanded  my 
keys,  they  were  so  hot  to  take  possession." 

"Joe  and  his  wife?" 

"  Put  her  first;  he  is  her  slave.  He  has 
no  heart  or  conscience  when  she  gives  the 
order.  But  let's  you  and  I  baffle  them. 
Let  us  get  well." 

"  I  mean  to,"  said  he  slowly,  "  so  where's 
the  sense  of  your  sobbing  and  crying  like 
that?" 

"Dear  heart,  what  can  I  do?  The  fear 
of  losing  you — the  affront — my  anger — -my 
hope — my  joy — -of  course  I  must  cry.  Oh ! 
oh !  oh  !     La !  how  you  smell  of  brandy !" 

"  Ay,  brandy  has  been  my  best  friend. 
I  drank  about  a  pint  while  you  were  down- 
stairs." 

"Oh,  goodness  gracious  me!  a  pint  of 
brandy !" 


"  Tell  ye  it  saved  me.     I'm  sleepy." 

He  went  off  to  sleep.  Rebecca  covered 
him  up  warm  and  fanned  him  gently.  He 
slept  some  hours,  and  on  awaking  asked  for 
brandy  and  yelk  of  egg.  He  took  this  at 
intervals. 

Dr.  Stevenson  came,  examined  and  felt 
him  all  over,  and  found  him  full  of  vital 
warmth,  looked  at  what  had  come  from 
him,  and  said,  "Better  an  empty  house 
than  a  bad  tenant."  In  a  word,  pro- 
nounced him  out  of  danger. 

During  his  convalescence  Mr.  Sutton 
talked  more  to  Rebecca  than  he  had  ever 
done,  and  told  her  that  at  one  time  he 
never  expected  to  live,  "for,"  said  he, 
solemnly,  "  I  was  as  near  my  dear  wife 
as  I  am  to  you.  I  could  not  see  her, 
unfortunately,   but  she  spoke  to  me." 

"  Oh,  sir,  tell  me ;  you'll  tell  me.  I  loved 
her;  I  had  reason." 

"Yes,  I  will  tell  you,"  said  he.  "She 
said,  'Not  now,  Samuel.  There  was  only 
one  woman  shed  a  tear  for  me,  and  only 
one  will  shed  a  tear  for  you. '  "  He  re- 
flected a  little.  "  Now  I  think  of  it,  that 
was  bidding  me  to  live  this  time.  Yes, 
Jenny,  my  love,  I'll  live  and  teach  some 
folk  a  lesson — they  have  taught  me  one." 

He  ordered  Rebecca  to  write  and  ask  his 
lawyer  to  come  to  him  at  once  with  two 
witnesses. 

Rebecca  had  cooled  by  this  time,  and 
began  to  be  a  little  alarmed  at  the  turn 
things  were  taking;  so  she  said  she  had 
been  a  good  deal  put  out  about  the  keys, 
and  he  must  not  take  to  heart  every  word 
an  angry  woman  said. 

"Mind  your  own  business,"  was  his 
reply.     "Write  as  I  bade  you." 

The  lawjTer  came  with  his  witnesses. 
Rebecca  retired. 

When  she  re-appeared  she  seemed  so  un- 
easy that  he  said  to  her:  "You  needn't 
look  as  if  you  had  robbed  a  church.  I 
have  not  disinherited  Joe." 

"I  am  right  down  glad  of  that." 

"  But  I  have  cut  him  down  a  bit,  and 
I've  changed  my  executor.  Now  please 
remember — the  next  time  I  die — you  are 
my  sole  executor;  and  your  keys  never 
leave  you." 


134 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


She  cast  a  beaming  look  of  affection  and 
gratitude  on  him.  He  had  applied  the 
right  salve  to  her  wound.  She  belonged 
to  a  sex  that  does  not  always  weigh 
things  in  our  balances.  She  was  not 
very  greedy  of  money,  but  to  take  her 
keys  from  her  was  to  dishonor  her  in  her 
office. 

It  was  soon  public  that  Mr.  Sutton  had 
made  a  new  will  —  contents  unknown. 
Lawyers  do  not  reveal  such  secrets  spon- 
taneously. 

"We  are  disinherited,"  cried  Joe's  wife, 
"and  by  that  woman  Barnes.  I  always 
warned  you  how  it  would  end.  But  you 
never  would  get  rid  of  her.  We  have  you 
to  thank  for  it,  the  children  and  I." 

Joe  resisted  for  once.  "  No,"  said  he,  "it 
is  all  your  doing.  She  would  have  let  you 
alone  if  you  had  let  her  alone.  But  you 
were  in  such  a  hurry  to  insult  her  you 
could  not  wait  till   it  was  safe." 

What,  ho!  Mutiny!  Rebellion!  And 
by  the  head  of  the  house,  paragon  of  sub- 
mission hitherto.  Mrs.  Joe  went  into  a 
fury,  and  threatened  to  leave  him  and 
take  the  children  — a  menace  I  should 
have  welcomed  with  rapture;  but  it 
ended  in  his  apologizing  for  his  gleam 
of  reason. 

When  Mr.  Sutton  had  kept  them  on 
tenter-hooks  for  a  month  and  more,  and 
was  in  better  health  than  ever  he  had 
been,  he  instructed  his  lawyers  to  answer 
the  questions  of  coarse  or  interested  curios- 
ity, and  it  soon  became  public  that  he  had 
made  an  equal  division,  half  to  his  nephew's 
family,  with  life-interest  to  Joseph  himself, 
and  half  to  Rebecca  Barnes  and  her  heirs 
forever,  the  said  Rebecca  being  his  wife's 
protegee,  and  his  faithful  housekeeper  and 
nurse. 

Joe  liked  this  much  better  than  being 
disinherited.  "Come,  Melly,"  said  he, 
"'blood  is  thicker  than  water.'  I  am 
content.  A  hundred  thousand  pounds  is 
not  starvation." 

Mrs.  Joe,  however,  did  not  seem  to  think 
so,  at  least  she  complained  rather  louder 
than  before.  "  To  share  our  inheritance 
with  a  menial,"  said  she,  and  repeated  this 
in  more  places  than  one.     She  even  inocu- 


lated Dr.  Stevenson  with  this  gentle  phrase, 
and  prevailed  on  him  to  offer  friendly  ad- 
vice to  his  late  patient,  and  gave  him  hints 
what  to  say.  Mrs.  Joe  was  his  best  client, 
being  full  of  imaginary  disorders,  so  he 
adopted  her  course;  called  on  Mr.  Sutton, 
was  heartily  welcomed, promised  him  thirty 
years  more,  and  then  took  the  liberty  of  an 
old  friend  to  advise  him.  Joe  had  a  young 
family.  The  division  was  not  equal,  and 
would  it  not  be  a  pity  to  leave  dispropor- 
tionate wealth  to  a  menial? 

"  A  menial?"  inquired  Sutton,  affecting 
innocent  ignorance  of  his  meaning. 

"  Well,  it  is  a  harsh  term,  but  it  is  what 
people  are  saying  just  now,  and  would  say 
louder  over  your  tombstone;  and,  after  all, 
whoever  you  pay  wages  to  is  a  menial,  and 
if  large  fortunes  are  left  to  them,  especially 
females,  why  somehow  it  always  makes 
scandal,  and  throws  discredit  on  an  honored 
name.  I  hope  you  will  not  be  angry  with 
me  for  speaking  freely — we  are  old  friends. " 

Mr.  Sutton  seemed  to  ponder.  "I  am 
afraid  you  are  right.  It  is  too  much 
money  to  leave  to  a  menial."  Then, 
suddenly,  "Seen  Joe  and  his  wife  lately:-'" 

"  I  saw  them  only  yesterday,"  said  the 
doctor,  off  his  guard.  "May  1  venture  to 
tell  them  you  will  reconsider  the  matter?" 

"  Not  from  me.  But  you  can  tell  who 
you  like  that,  on  second  thoughts,  I  ought 
not  to  make  a  menial  my  executor." 

"You  are  right.  And  I  suppose  you 
will  not  leave  such  a  very  large  fortune — " 

"To  a  menial?    No." 

The  doctor  went  away  pleased  at  his 
influence.  Mr.  Sutton  rang  the  bell  and 
bade  a  servant  send  Rebecca  to  him. 

When  she  came  he  handed  her  a  draft 
for  £100,  and  told  her  she  must  get  a  wed- 
ding-dress ready-made,  and  waste  no  time, 
for  she  was  to  be  married  right  off  by  special 
license. 

"  Me !"  said  she,  staring,  and  then  blush- 
ing.    "Never." 

"Next  Monday,  at  10:30,"  said  he, 
calmly. 

"No,  sir,"  said  she,  resolutely.  "I'll 
never  leave  my  master.  I  always  re- 
spected you,  and  now — I  have  nursed 
you.     I —     Don't  ask  me  to  leave  you — 


THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP.1 


135 


for  I  won't.  Forgive  me.  I  cannot. 
How  could  I?     The  idea!" 

"Who  asks  you,  goose?  It  is  me  you 
have  got  to  marry." 

"You,  sir?"  She  blushed  like  a  girl, 
she  laughed,  she  looked  at  him  to  see  if 
he  was  in  earnest;  then  she  said,  "Well, 
I  never!" 

"Come,  Becky,"  said  he,  "you  are  a 
woman  now;  don't  waste  time  like  a  girl." 

"I  am  a  woman,"  said  she,  "and  too 
much  your  friend  to  do  this  foolishness. 
Where's  the  use?  I  shall  never  leave  you, 
whether  or  no.  And  finely  the  folk  would 
talk  if  you  were  to  marry  your  servant. 
See  how  they  always  do  on  such  occasion. 
No,  sir,  if  you  will  be  ruled  by  me  for  once 
(she  had  been  guiding  him  for  years)  you, 
will  let  well  alone.  Asa  servant  you  have 
got  a  very  good  bargain  in  Becky  Barnes. 
But  I  should  be  a  bad  bargain  as  a  wife." 

"Don't  you — teach  me — my  business — 
Becky  Barnes,"  said  the  master,  severely. 
"  I  have  been  making  bargains  all  my  life, 
and  never  a  bad  one.  'Try  'em  before  you 
buy  'em  '  is  a  safe  rule,  and  terribly  neg- 
lected in  marriages.  I  have  had  you  under 
my  eye  twenty  years  in  health  and  sick- 
ness. You  are  a  good  housekeeper,  a  ten- 
der nurse,  a  faithful  friend,  and  you  are 
going  to  be  a  good  wife.  Come,  you'll 
have  to  obey  me  at  last,  so  don't  waste 
words,  and  don't  waste  time." 

By  this  time  Rebecca's  face  was  red  and 
her  eye  moist  at  such  unwonted  praise  from 
a  man  who  never  exaggerated  or  flattered. 

She  looked  at  him  softly,  and  said,  with 
a  pretty  air  of  mock  defiance, 

"  I'll  tell  everybody  you  made  me." 

"  Say  what  you  like,  my  dear,  and  do 
what  I  bid  you."  So  then  he  drew  her  to 
him  and  kissed  her;  put  the  draft  into  her 
hand,  and  dispatched  her  to  make  her  pur- 
chases. 

Her  pride  was  gratified.  The  nursing 
had  brought  their  hearts  nearer  to  each 
other,  and  she  said  to  herself, 

"  After  all,  what  does  it  matter  to  me? 
And  if  he  is  unhappy,  why,  it  will  be  my 
fault.     He  shall  not  be  unhappy." 

She  made  her  own  wedding-dress  for 
fear  of  unpunctual  milliners. 


Sunday  night  she  had  one  cry  over  the 
illusions  of  her  youth.  It  was  but  a  short 
one.  She  asked  herself,  if  those  two  men 
stood  before  her  now  which  she  should 
take. 

"  Why,  the  man,  and  not  the  cur." 

They  were  married  privately,  on  Mon- 
day, at  10:30. 

At  11  came  by  appointment  the  lawyer 
and  two  witnesses.  Mrs.  Samuel  Sutton 
was  sent  upstairs  to  put  on  her  traveling 
dress.  Meantime  Mr.  Sutton  and  the  law- 
yer did  business. 

"Mr.  Dawson,  my  second  will  was 
open  to  objection.  I  left  too  much  to  a 
menial." 

"Well,  sir,"  said  the  lawyer,  "it  was 
not  for  me  to  advise." 

"  But  you  agree  with  me." 

"Perfectly." 

"Well,  then,  cancel  will  No.  2." 

"  Both  wills  are  canceled  by  your  mar- 
riage, sir." 

"  Ah !  I  forgot.  Well,  draw  me  a  will 
on  the  lines  of  my  first.  Only  no  rigma- 
role this  time.  I'm  in  a  hurry.  You  can 
charge  me  for  a  volume,  but  put  it  all  in 
the  ace  of  spades,  that's  a  good  soul." 

The  lawj-er  consented,  and  handed  Mr. 
Sutton  testament  No.  1  to  peruse,  and  re- 
minded him  that  in  that  testament  the 
whole  property  was  left  to  the  Reverend 
Joseph  Newton  and  his  children — all  but 
£5,000  to  Rebecca  Barnes. 

"My  menial?" 

"Yes.     But  £5,000  was  not  excessive." 

"  Not  at  all,  if  you  knew  the  two  parties. 
Well,  sir,  I  don't  think  we  can  improve  on 
the  form  of  that  will.  Just  reverse  the 
provisions,  that  is  all." 

The  lawyer  stared. 

"  Leave  the  £5,000  to  my  nephew  to  play 
ducks  and  drakes  with,  and  all  my  real 
and  personal  estate  to  my  wife  Rebecca 
Sutton  and  her  heirs  forever." 

The  lawyer  stared,  bowed,  and  set  to 
work.  Mr.  Sutton  left  him  to  prepare  for 
his  journe}';  but  in  a  few  minutes  came 
back  and  hurried  him. 

"  Come,  polish  that  off,"  said  he.  "  We 
have  only  half  an  hour  to  get  to  the  sta- 
tion." 


136 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


"I  could  engross  it  and  send  it  up  to 
you  for  signature,"  suggested  the  solicitor. 

"What!  me  go  by  rail  intestate?  No, 
thank  you." 

The  will  was  drawn  and  attested,  and 
as  he  signed  it,  Sutton  said  to  the  lawyer, 
"  You  see  I  have  not  left  my  fortune  to  a 
menial" — then,  bitterly,  "nor  yet  to  mer- 
cenaries." 

The  wedded  pair  dashed  up  to  London. 
Each  looked  lovingly  at  the  other  on  the 
road,  and  Sutton  said  to  himself,  "  I  have 
done  this  marriage  in  a  vulgar  way.  She 
was  entitled  to  more  sentiment;  and — by 
Jove  —  now  I  look  at  her  —  she  is  a 
duck !" 

He  was  right,  every  woman  likes  to  be 
courted;  and  this  one  deserved  it.  Well, 
he  first  courted  her  after  marriage  instead 
of  before ;  courted  her  as  if  she  was  a  com- 
plete novelty;  presents,  uosegays,  atten- 
tions of  every  kind;  always  by  her  side, 
and  finding  her  some  pleasure  or  another; 
and  always  good-humored,  kind,  and  cour- 
teous in  a  plain,  manly  way. 

She  came  back  beaming  with  happi- 
ness, and  he  wore  a  conquering  air  that 
made  folks  smile. 

Sneers  flew  about  at  home  and  abroad, 
and  Mr.  Sutton  was  now  and  then  discom- 
posed. 

Rebecca's  watchful  eye  saw  it.  She 
never  said  a  word  about  it,  but  she  rumi- 
nated. 

One  da}-  the  study  door  was  ajar,  and 
she  heard  Mr.  Sutton's  voice  louder  than 
usual.  A  tradesman  was  there  and  had 
said  something  blunt;  she  gathered  as 
much  from  Mr.  Sutton's  answer.  "  Why, 
here's  a  to-do  because  a  plain  man  of  busi- 
ness has  married  his  housekeeper  that  was 
brought  up  by  his  wife,  and  her  father 
was  just  what  I  am,  only  not  so  lucky. 
One  would  think  a  duke  had  gone  and 
married  his  kitchen  wench.  Well,  yes,  I 
took  a  peach  out  of  my  own  garden  instead 
of  a  prickly  pear  out  of  a  swell  hot-house ; 
and  all  the  better  for  me,  and  all  the  worse 
for  Joe  Newton." 

Rebecca  heard  this  in  passing,  turned 
round  and  put  the  tips  of  the  fingers  of 
both  hands  to  her  lips  and  blew  the  speaker 


a  kiss  through  the  door  with  an  ardor,  an 
abandon,  and  a  grace  that  would  have 
adorned  a  lad3r  of  distinction. 

Next  morning  she  went  to  work  in  her 
way.  "My  dear,"  said  she,  gayly,  "I 
wonder  whether  you  would  give  me  a 
treat." 

"  Well,  Becky,  I  am  not  found  of  deny- 
ing you." 

"No,  indeed,  you  overindulge  me.  But 
the  truth  is  I  have  a  great  desire  to  see 
foreign  countries,  if  it  is  agreeable  to  you, 
dear. " 

"Agreeable  to  me!  Why,  I  have  been 
going  to  do  it  these  thirty  years." 

"  <  Hi,  I'm  so  glad.  Then  will  you  arrange 
a  tour  for  us,  a  nice  long  one?" 

Mr.  Sutton  fell  into  this  without  seeing 
all  that  lay  behind.  It  was  a  fair  speci- 
men of  Rebecca's  handiwork.  By  this 
means  the  house  was  shut  up,  the  satiri- 
cal servants  discharged  without  a  wrangle, 
and  his  friends  and  neighbors  taught  the 
value  of  Samuel  Sutton  by  his  absence. 

The  couple  traveled  Europe  wisely;  never 
bound  themselves  to  leave  a  place  half  en- 
joyed, nor  stay  in  it  exhausted.  They 
were  eighteen  months  away,  but  spent  the 
last  six  in  a  lovely  villa  near  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne. 

They  came  home  with  a  thumping  boy 
and  a  Norman  nurse,  and  both  parents 
looked   younger  than  when  they  went. 

The  news  spread  like  wild-fire. 

"They  bought  that  child  abroad,"  .--aid 
Mrs.  Joe. 

Alas  !  for  that  romantic  theory,  Rebecca 
nursed  him  herself  and  gloated  over  him, 
as  mothers  will,  and  fourteen  months  later 
produced  a  lovely  girl. 

The  parents  were  happy  in  their  children 
and  themselves;  both  found  in  their  own 
hearts  unsuspected  treasures  of  tenderness. 

The  wool-stapler  was  dictatorial  in  his 
own  house;  his  wife  docile  whenever  he 
laid  down  the  law ;  but  if  he  directed  she 
suggested,  and  he  generally  went  her  way; 
sometimes  without  knowing  it.  Uuder 
her  gentle  influence  he  arranged  a  large 
business-like  system  of  personal  charity, 
and  this  increased  so  as  to  find  them  both 
occupation,  and  withdraw  him  by  degrees 


"  THERE'S  MANY  A  SLIP  'TWIXT  THE  CUP  AND  THE  LIP.' 


137 


from  active  trade  without  subjecting  him 
to  ennui. 

He  became  a  sleeping  partner  in  the  wool 
trade  and  an  active  partner  in  a  large 
scheme  of  education,  and  judicious  loans 
and  relief,  much  of  which  emanated  by 
degrees  from  an  enlarged  housekeeper  feel- 
ing her  way,  and  possessed  of  administra- 
tive ability. 

When  they  drove  out  together  they  often 
sat  hand  in  hand,  as  well  as  side  by  side, 
and  one  plain  friend  who  saw  their  ways 
declared  they  were  a  young  couple,  and 
he  would  prove  it. 

"Ay,  prove  that,  you  dog,"  said  Samuel 
Sutton,  laughing. 

•'Well,  I  will.  'A  man  is  as  old  as  he 
feels,  and  a  woman's  as  old  as  she  looks.'  " 

The  proverb  was  admitted,  and  the  ap- 
plication thereof. 

After  a  long  struggle  between  poverty 
and  pride  the  Rev.  Joseph  Newton  wrote 
to  his  uncle  a  piteous  tale  of  his  young 
family — and  begged  relief. 

He  received  an  answer  by  return  of  post. 

"  My  dear  Joe — This  sort  of  thing  is 
in  your  aunt's  department.  You  had  bet- 
ter write  to  her." 

Then  there  was  fury  in  the  house  of 
Newton.  Reproaches — defiance — "  Apply 
to  that  woman — never !" 

A  few  more  months  and  County  Court 
summonses,  and  Joe  was  reproached  as  a 
bad  father,  who  could  not  sacrifice  his 
pride  to  his  children's  welfare. 

So  then  Joe  sent  the  hat  to  his  aunt. 
He  got  a  word  of  comfort  and  £100  by 
return  of  post.  He  was  melted  with  grati- 
tude, and  said  so  openly. 

Mrs.  Joe  snubbed  him,  and  said  it  was 
a  mere  drop  out  of  the  ocean  the  woman 
had  robbed  them  of. 

Not  a  year  passed  without  a  contribu- 
tion of  this  kind,  sometimes  unasked, 
sometimes  solicited.  Aunt  Rebecca  drew 
the  checks,  Uncle  Samuel  connived  with 
a  shrug;  it  was  money  thrown  into  a  bot- 
tomless pit,  and  he  knew  it. 

Only  once  did  Aunt  Rebecca  send  advice 


to  her  dilapidated  nephew — "You  have 
enough,  if  you  could  but  be  master  in 
your  own  house." 

Which  was  wasted  most,  the  advice  or 
the  money,  is  a  problem  to  be  solved  by 
him  who  shall  have  squared  the  circle. 

Years  have  rolled  on,  but  they  are  all 
alive,  these  little  studies;  to  call  them 
characters  might  seem  presumptuous. 

When  last  seen  Mr.  Sutton  was  eighty, 
and  looked  sixty ;  Joe  sixty-two,  and  looked 
seventy ;  Rebecca  sixty,  and  looked  forty — 
thanks  to  goodness,  a  nature  affectionate, 
not  passionate,  and  her  light  brick-dust 
color;  Mrs.  Joseph  Newton  sixty-one,  and 
looked  eighty. 

"Scornful  dogs  eat  dirty  puddings."  She 
still  speaks  disdainfully  of  "that  woman," 
and  takes  that  woman's  money,  and  awaits 
the  decease  of  Uncle  Samuel,  and  he  looks 
the  very  man  to  outlive  her. 

The  title  of  this  story  is  a  fine  one,  and 
there  are  many  examples  of  its  truth  in 
history  besides  the  above  tale,  the  leading 
incident  of  which  is  true  to  the  letter.  That 
title,  though  it  reads  idiomatic,  is  but  a 
happy  translation.  The  original  is  Greek, 
and  comes  down  to  us  with  an  example. 
To  the  best  of  my  recollection,  the  ancient 
legend  runs  that  a  Greek  philosopher  was 
discoursing  to  his  pupil  on  the  inability  of 
man  to  foresee  the  future — ay,  even  the 
event  of  the  next  minute.  The  pupil  may 
have  perhaps  granted  the  uncertainty  of 
the  distant  future,  but  he  scouted  the  no- 
tion that  men  could  not  make  sure  of  im- 
mediate and  consecutive  events.  By  way 
of  illustration,  he  proceeded  to  fill  a  goblet. 

"I  predict,"  said  he,  sneeringly,  "that, 
after  filling  this  goblet,  the  next  event  will 
be  I  shall  drink  the  wine." 

Accordingly  he  filled  the  goblet.  At  that 
moment  his  servant  ran  in.  "  Master !  mas- 
ter! a  wild  boar  in  our  vineyard." 

The  master  caught  up  his  javelin  direct- 
ly, and  ran  out  to  find  the  boar  and  kill 
him. 

He  had  the  luck  to  find  the  boar,  and 
attacked  him  with  such  spirit  that  Sir 
Boar  killed  him,  and  the  goblet  remained 
filled. 


138 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


From  that  incident  arose  in  Greece  the 
saying, 

IIoAAa  /jieTn£i>  77f  Act  kv\iko£  Km  ^etAeo^  axpov. 

This  has  been  Englished,  thus : 

"  There's  many  a  slip 
'Twixt  the  cup  and  the  lip." 

And  to  my  mind  the  superiority  of  the 
English   language  is  shown  here,  for  an 


original  -writer  has  always  a  certain  ad- 
vantage over  a  translator,  yet  the  English 
couplet  expresses  in  eleven  syllables  all  that 
the  Greek  hexameter  says  in  sixteen;  and 
our  couplet,  close  as  it  is,  can  be  reduced 
to  eight  syllables  without  weakening  or 
obscuring  the  sense — 

"  Many  a  slip 
Twixt  cup  and  lip." 


WHAT  HAS  BECOME  OF  LORD  CAMEL- 
FORD'S    BODY? 


This  question  comes  not  from  an  Old 
Bailey  counsel  squeezing  a  witness;  'tis 
but  a  mild  inquiry  addressed  to  all  the 
world,  because  the  world  contains  people 
who  can  answer  it;  but  1  don't  know 
where  to  find  them. 

To  trace  a  gentleman's  remains  beyond 
the  grave  would  savor  of  bad  taste  and 
Paul  Pry;  but  I  am  more  reasonable:  1 
only  want  to  trace  those  remains  into  a 
grave,   if  they  have  reached  one. 

Even  that  may  seem  impertinent  curios- 
ity— to  his  descendants;  but  if  it  is  im- 
pertinent, it  is  natural.  To  permit  the 
world  a  peep  at  strange  facts,  and  then 
drop  the  curtains  all  in  a  moment,  is  to 
compel  curiosity;  and  this  has  been  done 
by  Lord  Camelford's  biographers.  To 
leave  his  lordship's  body  for  seven  or 
eight  years  in  a  dust-bole  of  St.  Anne's 
Church,  packed  up — in  the  largest  fish- 
basket  ever  seen — for  exportation,  but  not 
exported,  is  also  to  compel  curiosity;  and 
this  has  been  done  by  his  lordship's  exec- 
utors. 

Now  this  last  eccentric  fact  has  come  to 
me  on  the  best  authority,  and  coupled  with 
the  remarkable  provisions  for  his  inter- 
ment made  by  Camelford  himself,  has  put 
me  into  such  a  state  that  there  is  no  peace 
nor  happiness  for  me  until   I  can   learn 


what  has  become  of  Lord  Camelford's 
body — fish-basket   and   all. 

I  naturally  wish  to  reduce  as  many  sen- 
sible people  aslcan  to  my  own  intellectual 
standard  in  re  Camelford.  I  plead  the  fox 
who,  having  lost  his  tail — as  I  my  head — 
was  for  decaudating  the  vulpine  species 
directly. 

To  this  bad  end,  then,  I  will  relate 
briefly  what  is  public  about  Lord  Camel- 
ford, and  next  what  is  known  only  to  me 
and  three  or  four  more  outside  his  own 
family. 

Eccentricity  in  person,  he  descended 
from  a  gentleman  who  did,  at  least,  one 
thing  without  a  known  parallel:  he  was 
grandson  or  great-grandson  of  Governor 
Pitt. 

I  beg  pardon  on  my  knees,  but  being 
very  old  and  infirm  and  in  my  dotage, 
and  therefore  almost  half  as  garrulous  as 
my  juvenile  contemporaries,  I  really  must 
polish  off  the  Governor  first.  He  had  a 
taste  for  and  knowledge  of  precious  stones. 
An  old  native  used  to  visit  him  periodical- 
ly and  tempt  him  with  a  diamond  of  pro- 
digious size.  I  have  read  that  he  used  to 
draw  it  out  of  a  piece  of  fusty  wool,  and 
dazzle  his  customer.  But  the  foxy  Gov- 
ernor kept  cool,  and  bided  his  time.  It 
came ;  the  merchant  one  day  was  at  low- 


WHAT   HAS   BECOME    OF   LORD    CAMELFORD'S   BODY?      139 


water  and  offered  it  cheaper.  Pitt  bought 
it ;  and  this  is  said  to  be  the  only  instance 
of  an  Anglo-Saxon  outwitting  a  Hindoo  in 
stones.  The  price  is  variously  printed — 
man  being  a  very  inaccurate  animal  at 
present — but  it  was  not  more  than  £28,000. 
Pitt  brought  it  home,  and  its  fame  soon 
rang  round  Europe.  A  customer  offered 
—the  Regent  of  France.  Price,  £135,000. 
But  France  at  that  time  was  literally  bank- 
rupt. The  representative  of  that  great 
nation  could  not  deal  with  this  English 
citizen,  except  by  the  way  of  deposit  and 
installment.  Accordingly  a  number  of  the 
French  crown- jewels  were  left  in  Pitt's 
hands,  and  four  times  a  year  the  French 
agents  met  him  at  Calais  with  an  install- 
ment, until  the  stone  was  cleared  and  the 
crown-jewels  restored. 

Thenceforth  the  Pitt  diamond  was  called 
the  Regent  diamond.  It  is  the  second  stone 
in  Europe,  being  inferior  to  the  Orlop,  but 
superior  in  size  to  the  Koh-i-noor;  for  it 
was  from  the  first  a  trifle  larger,  and  the 
Koh-i-noor,  originally  an  enormous  stone, 
was  fearfully  cut  down  in  Hindostan,  and 
of  late  years  terribly  reduced  in  Europe — 
all  the  better  for  the  Amsterdam  cutters. 

Every  great  old  stone  has  cost  many  a 
life  in  some  part  of  the  world  or  other. 
But  in  Europe  their  vicissitudes  are  mild. 
Only  the  Sancy  has  done  anything  melo- 
dramatic* The  Regent  has  always  gone 
quietly  along  with  France.  No  Bourbon 
took  it  into  exile  at  the  first  Revolution. 


*  The  Sancy,  a  beautiful  pear-shaped  diamond 
of,  say,  fifty-three  carats,  was  first  spoken  of  in 
the  possession  of  Philip.  Duke  of  Burgundy. 
Very  likely  he  imported  it,  for  he  dealt  habitu- 
ally with  the  East  for  curiosities.  It  passed, 
after  some  generations,  to  a  Portuguese  Prince. 
He  wanted  to  raise  money  on  it,  and  sent  it  to 
Paris,  instructing  the  messenger  to  swallow  it  if 
he  found  himself  in  trouble  or  danger.  It  did  not 
reach  Paris,  and  this  news  was  sent  to  Portugal. 
The  French  authorities  were  applied  to,  and  they 
searched  diligently,  and  found  a  foreigner  had 
been  assassinated,  and  buried  in  a  French  village. 
They  exhumed  him,  opened  him,  and  found  the 
Sancy  in  his  stomach.  The  stone  was  purchased 
by  James  the  Second,  and  afterward  was  in  vari- 
ous French  hands.  I  think  it  has  now  gravitated 
to  the  Rothschilds. 


No  Republican  collared  it.  Napoleon  set 
it  in  his  sword-hilt,  but  it  found  its  way 
back  to  the  royal  family  who  originally 
purchased  it,  from  them  to  the  Second 
Emperor,  and  again  to  this  Republic.  I 
am  afraid,  if  I  had  been  Bony,  I  should 
have  yielded  to  Etymology,  and  boned  it 
before  I  went  on  my  travels.  But  deli- 
cacy prevailed,  and  it  has  only  run  one 
great  risk.  In  1818  it  lay  a  week  in  a 
ditch  of  the  Champ  de  Mars,  after  the 
sack  of  the  Tuileries,  but  was  given  up 
at  last  under  a  happy  illusion  that  it  was 
unsalable.  As  if  it  could  not  have  been 
broken  up  and  the  pieces  sold  for  £1 00,000 ! 
The  stone  itself  is  worth  £800,000,  I  am 
told. 

From  the  importer  of  this  diamond  de- 
scended a  Mr.  Pitt,  who  was  made  a  peer 
in  1784.  He  had  a  son,  Thomas,  born  in 
1775,  to  astonish  his  contemporaries  while 
he  lived,  and  torment  one  with  curiosity 
seventy  years  after  his  death. 

Thomas  Pitt,  Lord  Camelford,  was  a 
character  fit  for  the  pen  of  Tacitus  or 
Clarendon :  a  singular  compound  of  vir- 
tues and  vices,  some  of  which  were  direct- 
ly opposed,  yet  ruled  him  by  turns;  so  that 
it  was  hard  to  predict  what  he  would  do 
or  say  on  any  given  occasion;  only  the 
chances  were  it  would  be  something  with 
a  strong  flavor,  good  or  bad. 

In  his  twenty-nine  years,  which  is  only 
nine  years  of  manhood,  he  assassinated  an 
unresisting  man,  and  set  off  to  invade  a 
great  and  warlike  nation,  single-handed; 
wrenched  off  many  London  door-knockers; 
beat  many  constables ;  fought  a  mob  single- 
handed,  with  a  bludgeon,  and  was  cud- 
geled and  rolled  in  the  gutter  without 
uttering  a  howl;  mauled  a  gentleman 
without  provocation,  and  had  £500  to 
pay;  relieved  the  necessities  of  many, 
and  administered  black  eyes  to  many. 
He  was  studious  and  reckless;  scientific 
and  hare-brained;  tender-hearted,  benevo- 
lent, and  barbarous;  unreasonably  vindic- 
tive and  singularly  forgiving.  He  lived 
a  humorous  ruffian,  with  flashes  of  virtue, 
and  died  a  hero,  a  martyr,  and  a  Christian. 

To  those  who  take  their  ideas  of  char- 
acter from  fiction  alone,  such  a  sketch  as 


140 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


this  must  seem  incredible;  for  fiction  is 
forced  to  suppress  many  of  the  anomalies 
that  Nature  presents.  David  was  even 
more  like  David  than  Camelford  varied 
from  Camelford;  and  the  chivalrous  Joab, 
who  dashed,  with  his  life  in  his  hand,  into 
the  camp  of  the  Philistines  to  get  his 
parched  general  and  king  a  cup  of  water, 
afterward  assassinated  a  brother  soldier  in 
a  way  so  base  and  dastardly  as  merited  the 
gibbet,  and  the  lash  to  boot.  Imagine  a 
fellow  hanging  in  chains  by  the  road-side, 
with  the  Victoria  Cross  upon  his  bosom, 
both  cross  and  gibbet  justly  earned  !  Such 
a  ni.in  was,  in  his  day,  the  son  of  Zeruiah. 
Were  fiction  to  present  such  bold  anoma- 
lies, they  would  he  dubbed  inconsistencies, 
and  Horace  would  lly  out  of  his  grave  at 
our  very  throats,  erring, 

Amphora  eoepit 
Institui,  currente  rotA  cur  urceusexit. 

It  is  all  the  more  proper  that  the  strange 
characters  of  history  should  be  impressed 
on  the  mind,  lest,  in  our  estimate  of  man- 
kind, men's  inconsistencies  should  1"'  for- 
gotten, and  puzzle  us  beyond  measure  some 
line  day  when  they  turn  up  in  real  life. 

Lord  Camelford  went  to  school  first  at 
a  village  of  the  Canton  Berne  in  Switzer- 
land, and  passed  for  a  thoughtful  box- 
thence  to  the  Charter-house.  He  took  a 
fancy  to  the  sea,  and  was  indulged  in  it. 
At  fourteen  years  oil  he  went  out  as  mid- 
shipman in  the  Ghiardian  frigate,  bound 
for  Botany  Bay  with  stores.  She  met 
with  disasters,  and  her  condition  was  so 
desperate  that  the  captain  (Riou)  per- 
mitted the  ship's  company  to  take  to  the 
boats.  He  himself,  however,  with  a  forti- 
tude and  a  pride  British  commanders  have 
often  shown  in  the  face  of  death,  refused 
to  leave  the  ship.  Then  Camelford  and 
ninety  more  gallant  spirits  stood  by  him 
to  share  his  fate.  However  they  got  the 
wreck — for  such  she  is  described — by  a 
miracle  to  the  Cape,  and  Camelford  went 
home  in  a  packet. 

Next  j'ear,  1791,  he  sailed  with  Van- 
couver in  the  Discovery.  But  on  this 
voyage  he  showed  insubordination,  and 
Vancouver  was  obliged  to  subject  him  to 


discipline.  He  got  transferred  to  the  Re- 
sistance, then  cruising  in  the  Indian  seas, 
and  remained  at  sea  till  1796,  when  his 
father  died,  and  he  returned  home  to  take 
his  estates  and  title. 

Though  years  had  elapsed,  he  could  not 
forgive  Captain  Vancouver,  but  sent  him 
a  challenge.  Vancouver  was  then  retired, 
and  in  poor  health.  The  old  captain  ap- 
pealed to  the  young  man's  reason,  and 
urged  the  necessitj-  of  discipline  on  board 
a  ship-of-war,  but  offered  to  submit  the 
case  to  any  flag-officer  in  the  navy,  and 
said  that  if  the  referee  should  decide  this 
to  be  a  question  of  honor,  he  would  resign 
his  own  opinion  and  go  out  with  Lieuten- 
ant ( lamelford. 

( lamelford,  it  is  to  be  feared,  thought  no 
sane  officer  would  allow  a  duel  on  such 
grounds;  for  he  did  not  accept  the  pro- 
posal, but  waited  his  opportunity,  and 
meeting  Vancouver  in  Bond  Street,  in- 
sulted him  and  tried  to  strike  him.  The 
mortification  and  humiliation  of  this  out- 
rage preyed  upon  Vancouver's  heart,  and 
shortened  the  life  of  a  deserving  officer 
and    very   distinguished    navigator. 

Little  more  than  a  year  after  this, 
Camelford  took  a  very  different  view  of 
discipline,  and  a  more  sanguinary  one. 
>  .1  there  was  one  key  to  these  discordant 
views — his  own  egotism. 

Peers  of  the  realm  rose  fast  in  the  king's 
service  ; it  that  date,  and  Camelford,  though 
only  a  lieutenant,  soon  got  a  command;  now 
it  so  happened  that  his  sloop,  the  Favorite, 
and  a  larger  vessel,  the  Perdrix,  Captain 
Fahie,  were  both  lying  in  English  Harbor, 
Antigua,  on  the  13th  January,  179S.  But 
Fahie  was  away  at  St.  Kitts,  and  Peter- 
son, first  lieutenant,  was  in  charge  of  the 
Perdrix.  Lord  Camelford  issued  an  order 
which  Peterson  refused  to  obey,  because 
it  affected  his  vessel,  and  he  represented 
Fahie,  who  was  Camelford 's  senior.  There 
were  high  words,  and,  no  doubt,  threats 
on  Camelford 's  part,  for  twelve  of  Peter- 
son's crew  came  up  armed.  It  is  not  quite 
clear  whether  Peterson  sent  for  them ;  but 
he  certainly  drew  them  up  in  line  and 
bared  his  own  cutlass.  Camelford  immedi- 
ately drew  out  his  own  marines,  and  ranged 


WHAT  HAS  BECOME    OF  LORD    CAMELFORD' S  BODY?      141 


them  in  a  line  opposite  Peterson's  men. 
He  then  came  up  to  Peterson  with  a  pistol 
and  said,  "  Lieutenant  Peterson,  do  you 
still   persist  in   not  obeying  my  orders?" 

"Yes,  my  lord,"  said  Peterson,  "I  do 
persist." 

Thereupon  Camelford  put  his  pistol  to 
Peterson's  very  breast  and  shot  him  dead 
on  the  spot.  He  fell  backward  and  never 
spoke  nor  moved. 

Upon  this  bloody  deed  the  men  retired 
to  their  respective  ships,  and  Camelford 
surrendered  to  Captain  Matson,  of  the 
Beaver  sloop,  who  put  him  under  parole 
arrest.  He  lost  little  by  that,  for  the 
populace  of  St.  John's  wanted  to  tear  him 
to  pieces.  A  coroner's  jury  was  sum- 
moned, and  gave  a  cavalier  verdict  that 
Peterson  "lost  his  life  in  a  mutiny,"  the 
vagueness  of  which  makes  it  rather  sus- 
picious. 

Camelford  was  then  taken  in  the  Beaver 
sloop  to  Martinique,  and  a  court-martial 
sat  on  him,  by  order  of  Rear- Admiral  Her- 
vey.  The  court  was  composed  of  the  five 
captains  upon  that  station,  viz.,  Cayley, 
Brown,  Ekers,  Burney,  and  Mainwaring, 
and  the  judgment  was  delivered  in  these 
terms,  after  the  usual  preliminary  phrases: 
"  The  court  are  unanimously  of  opinion  that 
the  very  extraordinary  and  manifest  dis- 
obedience of  Lieutenant  Peterson  to  the 
lawful  commands  of  Lord  Camelford,  the 
senior  officer  at  English  Harbor,  and  his 
arming  the  ship's  company,  were  acts  of 
mutiny  highly  injurious  to  his  majesty's 
service ;  the  court  do  therefore  unanimous- 
ly adjudge  that  Lord  Camelford  be  honor- 
ably acquitted." 

Such  was  the  judgment  of  sailors  sitting 
in  secret  tribunal.  But  I  think  a  judge 
and  a  jury  sitting  under  the  public  eye, 
and  sitting  next  day  in  the  newspapers, 
would  have  decided  somewhat  differently. 

Camelford  was  the  senior  officer  in  the 
harbor;  but  Peterson,  in  what  pertained 
to  the  Perdrix,  was  Fahie,  and  Fahie 
was  not  only  Camelford's  senior,  but  his 
superior  in  every  way,  being  a  post-cap- 
tain. 

"Lieutenant"  is  a  French  word,  with  a 
clear  meaning,    which   did   not   apply   to 


Camelford,  but  did  to  Peterson — lien  ten- 
ant or  locum  tenensj  I  think,  therefore, 
Peterson  had  a  clear  right  to  resist  in  all 
that  touched  the  Perdrix,  and  that  Camel- 
ford would  never  have  ventured  to  bring 
him  to  a  court-martial  for  mere  disobedi- 
ence of  that  order.  In  the  court-martial 
Camelford  is  called  a  commander;  but  that 
is  a  term  of  courtesy,  and  its  use,  under 
the  peculiar  circumstances,  seems  to  indi- 
cate a  bias ;  like  the  man  he  slaughtered, 
he  had  only  a  lieutenant's  grade. 

Much  turns,  however,  on  the  measure 
and  manner  even  of  a  just  resistance;  and 
here  Peterson  was  primd  facie  to  blame. 
But  suppose  Camelford  had  threatened 
violence!  The  thing  looks  like  an  armed 
defense,  not  a  meditated  attack.  For  the 
lieutenant  in  command  of  the  Favorite 
to  put  a  pistol  to  the  breast  of  the  lieu- 
tenant in  charge  of  the  Perdrix,  and 
slaughter  him  like  a  dog,  when  the  mat- 
ter could  have  been  referred  on  the  spot 
by  these  two  lieutenants  to  their  un- 
doubted superiors,  was  surely  a  most 
rash  and  bloody  deed.  In  fact,  opinion 
in  the  navy  itself  negatived  the  judg- 
ment of  the  court-martial.  So  many 
officers,  who  respected  discipline,  looked 
coldly  on  this  one-sided  disciplinarian, 
Camelford,  that  he  resigned  his  ship  and 
retired  from  the  service  soon  after. 

THE    CAPEICCIOS     OF    CAMELFORD. 

It  was  his  good  pleasure  to  cut  a  rusty 
figure  in  his  majesty's  service.  He  would 
not  wear  the  epaulets  of  a  commander,  but 
went  about  in  an  old  lieutenant's  coat,  the 
buttons  of  which,  according  to  one  of  his 
biographers,  "were  as  green  with  verdigris 
as  the  ship's  bottom."  He  was  a  Tartar, 
but  attentive  to  the  comforts  of  the  men, 
and  very  humane  to  the  sick.  He  studied 
hard  in  two  kinds — mathematical  science 
and  theology;  the  first  was  to  make  him 
a  good  captain ;  the  second  to  enable  him 
to  puzzle  the  chaplains,  who  in  that  day 
were  not  so  versed  in  controversy  as  the 
Jesuit  fathers. 

Returning  home,  with  Peterson's  blood 
on  his  hands,  he  seems  to  have  burned  to 
recover  his  own  esteem   by  some  act  of 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


higher  courage  than  shooting1  a  brother 
officer  a  bout  portant ;  and  he  certainly 
hit  upon  an  enterprise  that  would  not 
have  occurred  to  a  coward.  He  settled 
to  invade  France,  single-banded,  and 
shoot  some  of  her  rulers, pour  encourage?- 
les  autres.  He  went  to  Dover  and  hired 
a  boat.  He  was  sly  enough  to  say  a1 
first  he  was  bound  for  Deal;  but  after  a 
bit,  says  our  adventurer,  in  tones  appro- 
priately light  and  cheerful,  "  Wrll.no,  on 
second  thoughts,  let  us  go  to  Calais  ;  I 
have  gol  some  watches  and  muslins  I  can 
sell  there."  Going  to  France  in  thai 
light  and  cheerful  way  was  dancing  to 
the  gallows;  so  Adam,  skipper  of  the 
boat,  agreed  with  him  for  £10,  but  went 
directly  to  the  authorities.  They  con- 
cluded the  strange  gentleman  intended  to 
deliver  up  the  islalid  to  France,  so  they 
let  him  get  into  the  boat,  and  then  ar- 
rested him.  They  searched  him.  and 
found  him  armed  with  a  brace  of  pistols, 
a  dagger,  ami  a  letter  of  introduction  in 
French. 

They  sent  him  up  to  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil, and  France  escaped  invasion  that 
bout. 

At  that  time,  as  T  have  hinted.it  was 
a  capital  crime  to  go  1"  France  from 
England  :  so  the  gallows  yearned  for 
Camelford.  But  the  potent,  grave,  and 
reverend  seniors  of  his  majesty's  Council 
examined  him.  and  advised  the  king  to 
pardon  him  under  the  royal  seal.  They 
pronounced  that  "  his  only  motive  had 
been  to  render  a  service  to  his  country." 
This  was  strictly  true,  and  it  was  un- 
patriotic to  stop  him;  for  whoever  fat- 
tens the  plains  of  France  with  a  pestilent 
English  citizen,  or  consigns  him  to  a 
French  dungeon  for  life,  confers  a  benefit 
on  England,  and  this  benefit  Camelford 
did  his  best  to  confer  on  his  island  home. 
It  was  his  obstructors  who  should  have 
been  hanged.  His  well-meant  endeavor 
reminds  one  of  the  convicts'  verses,  bound 
for  Botany  Bay  : 

"  True  patriots  we.  for.  be  it  understood. 
We  left  our  country  for  our  country's  good.'' 

The  nation  that  had  retained  him 
against  his  will  now  began  to  suffer  fol- 


ks folly,  by  his  habitual  breaches  of  the 
public  peace. 

After  endless  skirmishes  with  the  con- 
stables, my  lord  went  into  Drury  Lane 
Theater,  with  others  of  the  same  kidney, 
broke  the  windows  in  the  boxes,  and  the 
chandeliers,  and  Mr.  Humphries's  head. 
Humphries  had  him  before  a  magistrate. 
Camelford  lied,  but  was  not  believed,  and 
then  begged  the  magistrate  to  ask  Mr. 
Humphries  if  he  would  accept  an  apolo- 
gy ;  but  word-ointment  was  not  the  balm 
for  Humphries,  who  had  been  twice 
knocked  down  the  steps  into  the  hall, 
and  got  his  rye  Dearly  beaten  out  of  his 
head.  He  prepared  an  indictment,  but 
afterward  changed  his  tactics  judiciously, 
and  sued  the  offender  for  damages.  The 
jury,  less  pliable  than  captains  in  a  secret 
tribunal,  gave  Humphries  a  verdict  and 
£500  damages. 

After  this.  Camelford's  principal  ex- 
ploits appear  to  have  been  fights  with 
the  constables,  engaged  in  out-  of  sport, 
but  Conducted  with  great  spirit  by  both 
parties,  and  without  a  grain  of  ill-will 
on  either  side.  He  invariably  rewarded 
their  valor  with  gold  when  they  suc- 
ceeded in  capturing  him.  When  they 
ol  him  prisoner,  he  would  give  the 
constable  of  the  night  a  handsome  bribe 
to  resign  his  place  to  him.  Tims  pro- 
moted, he  rose  to  a  certain  sense  of  duty, 
and  would  admonish  the  delinquents  with 
greal  good  sense  and  even  eloquence,  but 
spoiled  all  by  discharging  them.  Such 
was  his  night-work.  In  the  daytime  he 
was  often  surprised  into  acts  of  uninten- 
tional charity  and  even  of  tender-hearted- 
ness. 

HIS   NAME   A   TERROR   TO   FOPS. 

He  used  to  go  to  a  coffee-house  in  Con- 
duit Street,  shabbily  dressed,  to  read  the 
paper.  One  day  a  dashing  beau  came 
into  his  box,  flung  himself  down  on  the 
opposite  seat,  and  called  out,  in  a  most 
consequential  tone,  "Waitaa,  bring  a 
couple  of  wax-candles  and  a  pint  of  Ma- 
deira, and  put  them  in  the  next  box." 
En  attendant  he  drew-  Lord  Camelford "s 
candle  toward  him,  and  began  to  read. 
Camelford  lowered  at  him,  but  said  noth- 


WHAT  HAS   BECOME    OF   LORD    CAMELFORD' S    BODY?      143 


ing.  The  buck's  candles  and  Madeira  were 
brought,  and  he  lounged  into  his  box  to 
enjoy  them.  Then  Camelford  mimicked 
his  tone,  and  cried  out,  "  Waitaa,  bring 
me  a  pair  of  snuflaa."  He  took  the 
snuffers,  walked  leisurely  Kound  into  the 
beau's  box,  snuffed  out  both  the  candles, 
and  retired  gravely  to  his  own  seat.  The 
buck  began  to  bluster,  and  demanded  his 
name  of  the  waiter. 

"Lord  Camelford,  sir." 

"Lord  Camelford!  What  have  I  to 
pay  ?  "  He  laid  down  his  score  and  stole 
awajr  without  tasting  his  Madeira. 

HIS   PLUCK. 

When  peace  was  proclaimed  this  suffer- 
ing nation  rejoiced.  Not  so  our  pugna- 
cious peer.  He  mourned  alone — or  rather 
cursed,  for  he  was  not  one  of  the  sighing 
sort.  London  illuminated.  Carnelford's 
windows  shone  dark  as  pitch.  This  is  a 
thing  the  London  citizens  always  bitterly 
resent.  A  mob  collected,  and  broke  his 
windows.  His  first  impulse  was  to  come 
out  with  a  pistol  and  shoot  all  he  could  ; 
but  luckily  he  exchanged  the  firearm  for 
a  formidable  bludgeon.  With  this  my 
lord  sallied  out,  single-handed,  and  broke 
several  heads  in  a  singularly  brief  period. 
But  the  mob  had  cudgels  too,  and  belab- 
ored him  thoroughly,  knocked  him  down, 
and  rolled  him  so  diligently  in  the  kennel, 
while  hammering  him,  that  at  the  end  of 
the  business  he  was  just  a  case  of  mud 
with  sore  bones. 

All  this  punishment  he  received  with- 
out a  single  howl,  and  it  is  believed  would 
have  taken  his  death  in  the  same  spirit ; 
so  that,  allowing  for  poetic  exaggeration, 
we  might  almost  say  of  him, 

"  He  took  a  thousand  mortal  wounds 
As  mute  as  fox 'midst  mangling  hounds." 

The  next  night  his  windows  were  just 
as  dark ;  but  he  had  filled  his  house 
with  "boarders,"  as  he  called  them,  viz., 
armed  sailors  ;  and  had  the  mob  attacked 
him  again,  there  would  have  been  whole- 
sale bloodshed,  followed  by  a  less  tumult- 
uous, but  wholesale,  hanging  day. 

But  the  mob  were  content  with  having 
thrashed  him  once,   and   seem  to   have 


thought  he  had  bought  a  right  to  his 
opinions.  At  all  events  they  conceded 
the  point,  and  the  resolute  devil  was  al- 
lowed to  darken  his  house,  and  rebuke 
the  weakness  of  the  people  in  coming 
to   terms  with   Bony. 

THE    PITCHER    GOES   ONCE    TOO    OFTEN  TO 
THE   WELL. 

Camelford  had  a  male  friend,  a  Mr. 
Best,  and,  unfortunately,  a  female  friend, 
who  had  once  lived  with  this  very  Best. 
This  Mrs.  Simmons  told  Camelford  that 
Best  had  spoken  disparaging-ly  of  him. 
Camelford  believed  her,  and  took  fire. 
He  met  Best  at  a  cofTee-house  and  walked 
up  to  him  and  said,  in  a  loud,  aggressive 
way,  before  several  persons,  "  I  find,  sir, 
you  have  spoken  of  me  in  the  most  un- 
warrantable terms." 

Mr.  Best  replied,  with  great  modera- 
tion, that  he  was  quite  unconscious  of 
having  deserved  such  a  charge. 

"No,  sir,"  says  Camelford,  "you  know 
very  well  what  you  said  of  me  to  Mrs. 
Simmons.  You  are  a  scoundrel,  a  liar, 
and  a  ruffian  !  " 

In  those  days  such  words  as  these  could 
only  be  wiped  out  with  blood,  and  seconds 
were  at  once  appointed. 

Both  gentlemen  remained  at  the  coffee- 
house some  time,  and  during  that  time 
Mr.  Best  made  a  creditable  effort ;  he 
sent  Lord  Camelford  a  solemn  assurance 
he  had  been  deceived,  and  said  that  under 
those  circumstances  he  would  be  satisfied 
if  his  lordship  would  withdraw  the  ex- 
pressions he  had  uttered  in  error.  But 
Camelford  absolutely  refused,  and  then 
Best  left  the  house  in  considerable  agita- 
tion, and  sent  his  lordship  a  note.  The 
people  of  the  house  justly  suspected  this 
was  a  challenge,  and  gave  information  to 
the  police ;  but  they  were  dilatory,  and 
took  no  steps  till  it  was  too  late. 

Next  morning  earlj'  the  combatants 
met  at  a  coffee-house  in  Oxford  Street, 
and  Best  made  an  unusual  and,  indeed,  a 
touching  attempt  to  compose  the  differ- 
ence. "Camelford,"  he  said,  "  we  have 
been  friends,  and  I  know  the  unsuspect- 
ing generositj'  of  your  nature.  Upon  my 
honor  you  have  been  imposed  upon  by  a 


14-1 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


strumpet.     Do  not  insist  on  expressions 
under  which  one  of  us  must  fall." 

Camelford,  as  it  afterward  appeared, 
was  by  no  means  unmoved  by  this  appeal. 
But  he  answered,  doggedly,  '"Best,  this 
is  child's  play:  the  thing-  must  go  on." 
The  truth  is,  Best  had  the  reputation  of 
beinga  fatal  shot,  and  this  steeled  Camel- 
ford's  pride  and  courage  against  all  over- 
tures. 

The  duel  was  in  a  meadow  behind  Hol- 
land House.  The  seconds  placed  the  men 
at  thirty  paces,  and  this  seems  to  imply 
they  were  disposed  to  avoid  a  fatal  ter- 
mination if  possible. 

Camelford  fired  first,  and  missed. 
Best  hesitated,  and  some  think  he  even 
then  asked  Camelford  to  retract.  This, 
however,  is  nol  certain.  He  fired,  and 
Lord  Camelford  fell  at  his  full  length, 
like  a  man  who  was  never  to  stand  again. 

They  all  ran  to  him;  and  it  is  said  he 
—i\  e  Bes1  his  hand,  and  said,  "  Best,  1 
am  a  dead  man.  You  have  killed  me  ; 
but  1  freely  forgive  you." 

This  may  very  well  be  true;  for  it  cer- 
tainly accords  with  what  he  bad 
placed  on  paper  the  day  before,  and  also 
with  woi-ds  lie  undoubtedly  uttered  in  the 
.presence  <>f  several  witnesses  soon  after. 

Mr.  Bes1  and  bis  second  made  oil  to 
provide  for  their  safety.  One  of  Lord 
Holland's  gardeners  called  out  to  some 
men  to  stop  them:  but  the  wounded  man 
rebuked  him.  and  said  be  would  not  have 
them  stopped  ;  he  was  the  aggressor.  He 
forgave  the  gentleman  who  had  shot  him, 
and  hoped  God  would  forgive  lam  too. 

He  was  carried  home,  his  clothes  were 
cut  oil'  him.  and  the  surgeons  at  once  pro- 
nounced the  wound  mortal.  The  bullet 
was  buried  in  the  body,  and  the  lower 
limbs  quite  paralyzed  by  its  action.  It 
was  discovered,  after  his  death,  imbedded 
in  the  spinal  marrow,  having  traversed 
the  lungs.  He  suffered  great  agonies 
that  day,  but  obtained  some  sleep  in  the 
night.  He  spoke  often,  and  with  great 
contrition,  of  his  past  life,  and  relied  on 
the  mercy  of  his  Redeemer. 

Before  the  duel  he  had  done  a  just  and 
worthy  act.  He  had  provided  for  the 
safety  of  Mr.  Best  by  adding  to  his  will 


a  positive  statement  that  he  was  the  ag- 
gressor in  every  sense  :  "  Should  I.  there- 
fore, lose  my  life  in  a  contest  of  my  own 
seeking,  I  solemnly  forbid  any  of  nvy 
friends  or  relations  to  proceed  against 
my  antagonist.''  He  added  that  if  the 
law  should,  nevertheless,  be  put  in  force, 
he  hoped  this  part  of  his  will  would  be 
laid  before  the  king. 

I  have  also  private  information,  on 
which  I  think  I  can  rely.  thai,  when  he 
found  he  was  to  die,  he  actually  wrote  to 
the  king  with  his  own  hand,  entreating 
him  not  to  let  Best  be  brought  into 
t  rouble. 

And  if  we  consider  that,  as  deal  li  draws 
near,  the  best  of  men  generally  fall  into  a 
mere  brutish  apathy — whatever  you  may 
read  to  t  lie  contrary  in  Tracts — me  thinks 
good  men  and  women  may  well  yield  a 
tear  to  this  poor,  foolish,  sinful,  but 
heroic  creature,  who,  in  agonies  of  pain 
and  the  jaws  of  death,  could  yet  he  so 
earne  I  in  his  anxiety  that  no  injustice 
should  be  done  to  the  man  who  had  laid 
him  low.  This  stamps  Camelford  n.  man. 
The  best  woman  who  ever  breathed  was 
hardly  capable  of  it.  Shi' would  forgive 
her  enemy,  but  she  could  not  trouble  her- 
self and  worry  herself,  and  provide,  niori- 
bunda,  againsl  injustice  being  done  to 
nemy  :  c'etait  mdle. 

1  come  now  to  those  particulars  which 
have  caused  me  to  revive  the  memory  of 
Thomas  Pitt,  Lord  Camelford,  and  I 
divide  them  into  public  and  private  in- 
formation. 

THE   PUBLIC   INFORMATION. 

The  day  before  his  death  Lord  Camel- 
ford wrote  a  codicil  to  his  will  which,  like 
his  whole  character,  merits  study. 

He  requested  his  relations  not  to  wear 
mourning  for  him,  and  he  gave  particular 
instructions  as  to  the  disposal  of  his  re- 
mains in  their  last  resting-place.  In  this 
remarkable  document  he  said  that  most 
persons  are  strongly  attached  to  their 
native  place,  and  would  have  their  re- 
mains conveyed  home,  even  from  a  great 
distance.  "  His  desire,  however,  was  the 
reverse.  He  wished  his  body  to  be  con- 
veyed to  a  country  far  distant,  to  a  spot 


WHAT   HAS   BECOME    OF   LORD    CAMELFORD'S    BODY?       145 


not  near  the  haunts  of  men,  but  where 
the  surrounding'  scenery  might  smile 
upon  his  remains." 

He  then  went  into  details.  The  place 
was  by  the  lake  of  St.  Pierre,  in  the  Can- 
ton Berne,  Switzerland.  The  particular 
spot  had  three  trees  standing  on  it.  He 
desired  the  center  tree  to  be  taken  up 
and  ids  body  deposited  in  the  cavity,  and 
no  stone  nor  monument  to  mark  the 
place.  He  gave  a  reason  for  the  selec- 
tion, in  spite  of  a  standing-  caution  not  to 
give  reasons.  "At  the  foot  of  that  tree," 
said  he,  "I  formerly  passed  many  hours 
in  solitude,  contemplating  the  mutability 
of  human  affairs."  He  left  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  trees  and  ground  £1,000 
by  way  of  compensation. 

COMMENT   ON  THE   PUBLIC   INFORMATION. 

Considering  his  penitent  frame  of  mind, 
his  request  to  his  relations  not  to  go  into 
mourning  for  him  may  he  assigned  to  hu- 
mility, and  the  sense  that  he  was  no  great 
loss  to  them. 

But  as  to  the  details  of  his  interment, 
I  feel  sure  he  mistook  his  own  mind,  and 
was,  in  reality,  imitating  the  very  per- 
sons he  thought  he  differed  from.  I  read 
him  thus  by  the  light  of  observation. 
Here  was  a  man  whose  life  had  been  a 
storm.  At  its  close  he  looked  back  over 
the  dark  waves,  and  saw  the  placid 
waters  his  youthful  bark  had  floated  in 
before  he  dashed  into  the  surf.  Eccen- 
tric in  form,  it  was  not  eccentric  at  bot- 
tom, this  wish  to  lay  his  shattered  body 
beneath  the  tree  where  he  had  sat  so  oft- 
en an  innocent  child,  little  dreaming  then 
that  he  should  ever  kill  poor  Peterson  with 
a  pistol,  and  be  killed  with  a  pistol  him- 
self in  exact  retribution.  That  at  eleven 
years  of  age  he  had  meditated  under  that 
tree  on  the  mutability  of  human  affairs  is 
nonsense.  Here  is  a  natural  anachron- 
ism and  confusion  of  ideas.  He  was  medi- 
tating on  that  subject  as  he  lay  a  dying ; 
but  such  were  never  yet  the  meditations 
of  a  child.  The  matter  is  far  more  sim- 
ple than  all  this.  He  who  lay  dying  by 
a  bloody  death  remembered  the  green 
meadows,    the    blue    lake,   the    peaceful 


hours,  the  innocent  thoughts,  and  the 
sweet  spot  of  nature  that  now  seemed  to 
him  a  temple.  His  wish  to  lie  in  that 
pure  and  peaceful  home  of  his  childhood 
was  a  natural  instinct,  and  a  very  com- 
mon one.  Critics  have  all  observed  it 
and  many  a  poet  sung  it,  from  Virgil  to 
Scott. 

Occidit,  et  mot'iens  dulces,  reminiscitur  Argos. 
THE  PRIVATE   INFORMATION. 

In  the  year  1858,  I  did  business  with 
a  firm  of  London  solicitors,  the  senior 
partner  of  which  had  in  his  youth  been 
in  a  house  that  acted  for  Lord  Camel- 
ford. 

It  was  this  gentleman  who  told  me 
Cainelford  really  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
king  in  favor  of  Best.  He  told  me, 
further,  that  preparations  were  actually 
made  to  carry  out  Camelford's  wishes  as 
to  the  disposal  of  his  remains.  He  was 
embalmed  and  packed  up  for  transporta- 
tion. But  at  that  very  nick  of  time  war 
was  proclaimed  again,  and  the  body, 
which  was  then  deposited,  pro  tempore, 
in  St.  Anne's  Church,  Soho,  remained 
there,  awaiting  better  times. 

The  w^ar  lasted  a  long  while,  and, 
naturally  enough,  Camelford's  body  was 
forgotten. 

After  Europe  was  settled,  it  struck  the 
solicitor,  who  was  my  friend's  informant, 
that  Camelford  had  never  been  shipped 
for  Switzerland.  He  had  the  curiosity, 
to  go  to  St.  Anne's  Church  and  inquire. 
He  found  the  sexton  in  the  church,  as  it 
happened,  and  asked  him  what  had  be- 
come of  Lord  Camelford. 

"Oh,"  said  the  sexton,  in  a  very 
cavalier  way,  "here  he  is  ;  "  and  showed 
him  a  thing  which  he  afterward  de- 
scribed to  my  friend  M'Leod  as  an 
enormously  long  fish-basket,  fit  to  pack 
a  shark  in. 

And  this,  M'Leod  assured  me,  was 
seven  or  eight  years  after  Camelford's 
death. 

Unfortunately,  M'Leod  could  not  tell 
me  whether  his  informant  paid  a  second 
visit  to  the  church,  or  what  took  place 
between  1815  and  1858. 


14G 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


The  deceased  peer  may  be  now  lying 
peacefully  in  that  sweet  spot  he  selected 
and  paid  for.  But  I  own  to  some  mis- 
givings on  that  head.  In  things  of  rou- 
tine, delay  masters  little ;  indeed,  it  is  a 
part  of  the  system  ;  but  when  an  out-of- 
the-way  thing  is  to  be  done,  oh,  then  de- 
lay is  dangerous  :  the  zeal  cools  :  the  ex- 
pense and  trouble  look  bigger ;  the  obli- 
gation to  incur  them  seems  fainter.  The 
inertia  of  Mediocrity  flops  like  lead  into 
the  scale,  and  turns  it.  Time  is  really 
edax  rerum,  and  fruitful  in  destructive 
accidents;  rectors  are  apt  to  be  a  little 
lawless;  church-wardens  deal  with  dust- 
men; and  dead  peers  are  dust.  Even 
sextons  are  capable  of  making  away 
with  what  nobody  seems  to  value,  or 
it  would  not  lie  years  forgotten  in  a 
corner. 

These  thoughts  prey  upon  my  mind; 
and  as  his  life  and  character  wen'  very 
remarkable,    and    his    death    very,    very 


noble,  and  his  instructions  explicit,  and 
the  duty  of  performing  them  sacred,  I 
have  taken  the  best  way  I  know  to  rouse 
inquiry,  and  learn,  if  possible, 

what  has  become  of  lord  camel- 
ford-s    body. 

Charles  Reade. 


Authorities. — Annual  Register,  February  25, 
1798;  Times,  January  14  ami  17,  1799;  True 
Briton,    January    17,  19,  1799  ;  "Humphries   v. 

Ca Iford,"      Londoii     Chronicle,    Times,    True 

Briton,  Porcupine,  May  16,  17,  18,  1799;  Porcu- 
pine, October  8  and  12,  1801  ;  Times,  October  9, 
12, 17.  24,  1801  ;  Morning  lost.  March  8. 10, 13,  14, 
26,  28,  1804;  Annual  Register,  1804 ;  Eccentric 
Mirror,  1807. 

Rev.  William  Cockburn,  "An  Authentic  Ac- 
count of  Lord  Camelford's  Death,  with  an  Extract 
from  his  Will,"  etc.,  1804.  Letter  from  William 
Cockburn  to  Philip  Neve,  Esq.,  Morning  Post, 
March  20,  1804 

M'Leod,  deceased. 


END   OF    "GOOD   STORIES." 


GOOD   STORIES   OF    MAM    AND 
OTHER  ANIMALS. 


THE    KNIGHT'S    SECRET. 


Thomas  Erpinghah  was  knighted  by 
Henry  the  Fourth  for  good  and  valiant 
service. 

This  Sir  Thomas  Erpingham,  Knight  of 
the  Garter,  afterward  fought  by  the  side 
of  Henry' the  Fifth  in  his  French  wars, 
and  was  made  Warden  of  the  Cinque 
Ports,  but  retired  to  Norwich,  his  native 
place.  He  married  a  beautiful,  pious 
lady,  and  after  a  turbulent  career  and  the 
horrors  of  war,  desired  to  end  his  days  in 
charity.  Being  wealthy,  and  of  one  mind, 
he  and  Lady  Erpingham  built  a  goodly 
church  in  the  city,  and  also  erected  and 
endowed  a  religious  house  for  twelve 
monks  and  a  prior  close  to  the  knight's 
house,  and  parted  only  by  a  high  wall. 

But  though  the  retired  soldier  wished 
to  be  at  peace  with  all  men,  two  of  his 
friars  were  of  another  mind  :  Friar  John 
and1  Friar  Richard  hated  each  other,  and 
could  by  no  means  be  reconciled  ;  neither 
had  ever  a  good  word  for  t'other ;  and  at 
last  Friar  John  gave  Friar  Richard  a  fair 
excuse  for  his  invectives.  Lady  Erping- 
ham came  ever  to  matins  in  the  convent, 
and  Friar  John  would  always  await  her 
coming,  and  attend  her  through  the  clois- 
ter, with  ducks  and  cringes  and  open 
adulation  ;  whereat  she  smiled,  being,  in 


truth,  a  most  innocent  lady,  affable  to  all, 
and  slow  to  think  ill  of  any  man. 

But  Richard  denounced  John  as  a  li- 
centious monk ;  and  some  watched  and 
whispered  ;  others  rebuked  Richard  ;  for 
it  was  against  the  monastic  rule  to  put  an 
ill  construction  where  the  matter  might 
be  innocent. 

But  Richard  stood  his  ground  ;  and, 
unfortunately,  Richard  was  right.  Mis- 
understanding the  lady's  courtesy  and 
charity,  Brother  John  thought  his  fawn- 
ing advances  were  encouraged,  and  this 
bred  in  him  such  impudence  that  one  day 
he  sent  her  a  fulsome  love-letter,  and  had 
the  hardihood  to  beg  for  a  private  inter- 
view. 

The  lady,  when  she  opened  this  letter, 
could  hardly  believe  her  senses:  and  at  last, 
as  gentlewomen  will  be  both  unsuspicious 
and  suspicious  in  the  wrong  place,  she 
made  up  her  mind  that  the  poor,  good, 
ridiculous  friar  could  never  have  been  so 
wicked  as  to  write  this  ;  nay,  but  it  was 
her  husband's  doing,  and  a  trial  of  her 
virtue:  he  was  older  than  herself,  and 
great  love  is  oft  tainted  with  jealousy. 

This  brought  tears  into  her  eyes,  to 
think  she  should  be  doubted  ;  but  soon 
anger  dried  them,  and  she  took  occasion 

(117) 


148 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READF. 


to  put  the  letter  suddenly  into  Sir 
Thomas's  hand,  and  fixed  her  eyes  on  him 
so  keenly  that  if  there  had  been  a  flaw  in 
his  conjugal  armor,  no  doubt  those  eves 
had  pierced  it. 

The  knight  read  the  letter,  and  turned 
black  and  white  with  rage  ;  his  eyes 
sparkled  with  fury,  and  he  looked  so 
fearful  that  the  lady  was  very  sorry  she 
had  shown  him  the  letter,  and  begged 
him  not  to  take  a  madman's  folly  to 
heart. 

"Not  take  it  to  heart!"  said  he. 
"Whai  !  these  beggarly  shavelings  thai 
I  have  housed  and  fed,  and  so  lessened 
my  estate  and  thine — they  shall  corrupl 
thee,  and  rob  me  of  my  one  earthly  treas- 
ure !     Sit  thou  down  and  write." 

••  Write — Thomas     whai  ?— -towhom?" 

"Do  as  I  bid  thee,  dame,"  said  he, 
sternly,  "and  no  more  words." 

Those  were  days  when  husbands  com- 
manded and  wives  obeyed;  so  she  sat 
down,  trembling,  and  took  the  pen. 

Then  he  made  her  write  a  letter  back 
to  the  friar,  and  say  she  compassionated 
his  love,  and  her  husband  was  to  ride 
toward  London  that  night,  and  her  serv- 
ant, on  whom  she  could  depend,  should 
admit  him  to  her  by  a  side  door  of  the 
house. 

Friar  John,  at  the  appointed  time,  took 
care  to  be  in  the  town,  for  he  knew  the 
lay  brother  who  kept  the  gate  of  the 
priory  would  not  let  him  out  so  late.  He 
came  to  the  side  door,  and  was  admitted 
by  a  servant  of  the  knight,  a  reckless 
old  soldier,  who  cared  for  neither  man 
nor  devil,  as  the  saying  is,  but  only  for 
his  master.  This  man  took  him  into  a 
room  and  left  him,  then  went  for  the 
knight:  he  was  not  far  off.  Now  the 
unlucky  monk,  being  come  to  the  con- 
quest of  a  beautiful  lady,  as  he  vainly 
thought,  had  fine  linen  on,  and  perfumed 
like  a  civet.  The  knight  smelled  these 
perfumes,  and  rushed  in  upon  him  with 
his  man.  like  dogs  upon  the  odoriferous 
fox.  and,  in  a  fury,  without  giving  him 
time  to  call  for  help  or  to  say  one  prayer, 
strangled  him,  and  left  him  dead. 

But  Death  breeds  calm  ;  the  knig-kt"s 
rage   abated  that  moment,  and  he  saw 


he  had  done  a  foul  and  remorseless  deed. 
He  would  have  given  half  his  estate  to 
bring  the  offender  back  to  life.  Half  his 
estate?  His  whole  estate,  ay,  and  his 
life,  were  now  gone  from  him  :  they  were 
forfeited  to  the  law.  So  did  he  pass  from 
rage  to  remorse,  and  from  remorse  to 
fear.  The  rough  soldier,  seeing  him  so 
stricken,  made  light  of  all,  except  the 
danger  of  discovery.  "  Come,  noble 
sir,"  said  he,  "let  us  bestir  ourselves 
and  take  him  hack  to  the  priory,  and 
there  bestow  him;  so  shall  we  ne'er  be 
known  in  it." 

Thus  urged,  t he  knight  roused  himself, 
and  he  and  his  man  brought  the  body 
out,  and  got  if  as  far  as  the  wall  that 
did  pari  the  house  from  the  monastery. 
Here  they  were  puzzled  a  while,  hut  the 
man  remembered  a  short  lander  in  the 
back  yard,  that  was  high  enough  for  this 
job.  So  they  set  the  ladder,  and,  with 
much  ado.  got  the  body  up  it.  and  then 
drew  the  ladder  up  and  set  it  again  on 
the  other  side  and  so,  with  infinite  trou- 
ble, the  soldier  got  him  into  the  priory. 

The  next  thing  was'to  make  it  appear 
Friar  John  had  died  a  natural  death. 
Accordingly,  he  set  him  upon  a  rickety 
chair  he  found  in  the  J'ard,  balanced  him, 

and  left  him;  mounted  the  wall  again, 

let.  himself  down,  and  then  dropped  into 
the  knight 's  premises. 

He  found  the  knight  walking  in  great 
perturbation,  and  they  went  into  the 
house. 

•-.Now.  good  master,"  said  this  stout 
soldier,  "go  you  to  bed,  and  think  no 
more  oirt." 

"To  bed!"  groaned  the  knight,  in 
agony.  "Why  should  I  go  there?  1 
cannot  sleep.  Methinks  I  shall  never 
sleep  again." 

"  Then  give  me  the  cellar  key.  good  sir. 
I'll  draw  a  stoup  of  Canary.7' 

"Ay,  wine!"  said  the  knight;  "for 
my  blood  runs  cold  in  1113-  veins." 

The  servant  lighted  a  rousing  fire  in 
the  dining-hall,  and  warmed  and  spiced 
some  generous  wine,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  day,  and  there  sat  these  two  over 
the  fire  awaiting  daylight  and  its  reve- 
lations. 


THE  KNIGHTS   SECRET. 


149 


But,  meantime,  the  night  was  fruitful 
in  events.  The  prior,  informed  of  Friar 
Richard's  uncharitable  interpretations, 
had  condemned  him  to  vigil  and  prayer 
on  the  bare  pebbles  of  the  yard,  from 
midnight  until  three  of  the  clock.  But 
the  sly  Richard,  at  dusk,  had  conveyed 
a  chair  into  the  yard  to  keep  his  knees 
off  the  cold  hard  stones. 

At  midnight,  whoa  he  came  to  his 
enforced  devotions,  lo,  there  sat  a  figure 
in  the  chair.  He  started,  and  took  it  for 
the  prior,  seated  there  to  lecture  him  for 
luxury ;  but  peeping,  he  soon  discovered 
it  was  Friar  John. 

He  walked  round  and  round  him,  talking 
at  him.  "  Is  it  Brother  John  or  Brother 
Richard  who  is  to  keep  vigil  to-night? 
I  know  but  one  friar  in  all  this  house 
would  sit  star-gazing  in  his  brother's 
chair,  when  that  brother  wants  it  to 
pray  in,"  etc. 

Brother  John  vouchsafed  no  reply;  and 
this  stung  Brother  Richard,  and  he  burned 
for  reveng-e.  "  So  be  it,  then,"  said  he  ; 
"since  my  place  is  taken,  I  will  tell  the 
prior,  and  keep  vigil  some  other  night." 
With  this  he  retired,  and  slammed  the 
door.  But  having  thus  disarmed,  as  he 
conceived,  Brother  John's  suspicion,  he 
took  up  an  enormous  pebble,  and  slipped 
back  on  tiptoe,  and  getting  near  the  an- 
gle of  a  wall,  he  flung  his  great  pebble  at 
Brother  John,  and  slipped  hastily  behind 
the  wall;  nevertheless,  as  he  hid,  he  had 
the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  pebble,  which 
weighed  about  a  stone,  strike  Brother 
John  on  the  nape  of  the  neck,  and  then 
there  was  a  lumping  noise  and  a  great 
clatter,  and  Friar  Richard  chuckled  with 
pride  and  delight  at  the  success  of  his 
throw.  However,  he  waited  some  min- 
utes before  he  emerged,  and  then  walked 
briskly  out,  like  a  new-comer.  There  lay 
John  flat,  and  the  chair  upset.  Brother 
Richard  ran  to  him,  charged  with  hypo- 
critical sympathy,  and  found  his  enemy's 
face  very  white.  He  got  alarmed,  and 
felt  his  heart ;  he  was  stone-dead. 

The  poor  monk,  whose  hatred  was  of  a 
mere  feminine  sort,  and  had  never  been 
deadly,  was  seized  with  remorse,  and  he 
beat  his  breast,  and   praj-ed  in   earnest, 


instead  of  repeating  Paternosters,  "preces 
sine  mente  dictas,"  as  the  great  Erasmus 
calls  them. 

But  other  feelings  soon  succeeded  :  his 
enmity  to  the  deceased  was  well  known, 
and  this  would  be  called  murder,  if  the 
body  was  found  in  that  yard;  and  his 
own  life  would  pay  the  forfeit. 

Casting  his  eyes  round  for  a  place  where 
he  might  hide  the  body,  he  saw  a  ladder 
standing  against  the  wall.  This  sur- 
prised him  ;  but  he  was  in  no  condition 
to  puzzle  over  small  riddles.  Terror  gave 
him  force  :  he  lifted  the  body,  crawled  up 
the  ladder,  and  placed  the  body  on  the 
wall — it  was  wider  than  they  build  now — 
then  he  drew  up  the  ladder,  set  it  on  the 
other  side,  and  took  his  ghastly  load 
down  safely.  Then  being  naturally  cun- 
ning and  having  his  neck  to  save,  he 
went  and  hid  the  ladder,  took  up  the 
bod j',  staggered  with  it  as  far  as  the 
porch  of  the  knight's  house,  and  set  it 
there  bolt -upright  against  one  of  the 
pillars. 

As  he  carried  it  out  of  the  yard  he 
heard  a  window  in  the  knight's  house 
open.  He  could  not  see  where  the  win- 
dow was,  nor  whether  he  was  watched  and 
recognized  ;  but  he  feared  the  worst,  and 
such  was  his  terror,  he  resolved  to  fly  the 
place  and  bury  himself  in  some  distant 
monastery  under  another  name. 

But  how  ?  He  was  lame,  and  could 
not  go  ten  miles  in  a  day,  whereas  a  hun- 
dred miles  was  little  enough  to  make  him 
secure. 

After  homicide,  theft  is  no  great  mat- 
ter: he  resolved  to  borrow  the  maltster's 
mare,  and  turn  her  adrift  when  she  had 
carried  him  beyond  the  hue  and  cry.  So 
he  went  and  knocked  up  the  maltster, 
and  told  him  the  convent  wanted  flour, 
and  he  was  to  go  bet  imes  to  the  miller 
for  a  sack  thereof.  Now  the  convent  was 
a  good  customer  to  the  maltster ;  so  he 
lent  Friar  Richard  the  mare  at  a  word, 
and  told  him  where  to  find  the  saddle  and 
bridle. 

Richard  fed  the  mare  for  a  journey  and 
saddled  her ;  then  he  mounted  and  rode 
at  a  foot-pace  past  the  convent,  mean- 
ing to    go    quietly   through    the    town, 


150 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


making  no  stir,  then  away  like  the 
wind. 

But  as  he  paced  by  the  knight's  house 
he  cast  a  look  ascaunt  to  see  if  that 
ghastly  object  still  sat  in  the  porch. 

No,  the  porch  was  empty. 

What  might  that  mean  ?  Had  he  come 
to  life  ?  Had  the  murder  been  discovered  ? 
He  began  to  wonder  and  tremble. 

While  he  was  in  this  mood  there  was  a 
great  clatter  behind  him  of  horse's  feet 
and  clashing  armor,  and  he  felt  he  was 
pursued. 

The  knight  and  his  man  sat  together, 
drinking  hot  spiced  wine  and  awaiting 
daylight.  The  knight  would  not  go  to 
bed,  yet  he  wanted  a  change.  "  Will 
daylight   never  come?"  said  he. 

'•  "Twill  be  here  anon."  said  the  soldier; 
"  in  half  an  hour." 

The  knight  said  no.  it  would  never 
come. 

The  soldier  said  he  would  go  and  look 
at  1  h«'  sky,  ami  tell  him  for  certain. 

"  Be  not  long  away."  said  the  knight, 
with  a  shiver,  "orthedead  friarwillbe 
taking  thy  place  here  ami  pledging  me." 

"  Stuff  !  "  said  the  soldier;  "  he'll  never 
trouble  you  more." 

With  tins  he  marched  out  to  consull 
the  night,  and  almost  ran  againsl  tin' 
dead  friar  seated  in  the  porch,  white  and 
glaring:  this  was  too  much  even  for  the 
iron  soldier;  he  uttered  a  sharp  yell, 
staggered  back,  and  burst  into  the  room, 
gasping  for  breath.  He  got  close  to  his 
master,  and  stammered  out,  "  The  dead 
man!  —  sitting  in  the  porch!"  —  and 
crossed  himself  energetically,  the  first 
time  these   thirty  years. 

The  knight  stared  and  trembled:  and 
so  they  drew  close  together,  with  their 
eyes  over  their   shoulders. 

•'  Wine  !  "  cried  the  knight. 

"  Ay,"  said  the  soldier  ;  "  but  I  go  not 
alone.  He'll  be  squatting  on  the  cask 
else." 

So  they  went  together  to  the  cellar, 
often  looking  round,  and  fetched  two 
bottles. 

They  drank  them  out,  and  the  good 
wine,  falling  upon  more  of  the  sort,  made 


them  madder  and  bolder.  They  rolled 
along,  holding  on  by  one  another,  to  the 
porch,  and  there  they  stood  and  looked 
at  the  dead  friar,  and   shuddered. 

But  the  soldier  swore  a  great  oath,  and 
vowed  he  should  not  stay  there  to  get 
them  hanged.  Thereupon  a  furious  fit  of 
recklessness  succeeded  to  their  terror : 
they  got  a  suit  of  rusty  armor  and  fast- 
ened it  on  the  body  ;  then  they  saddled  an 
old  war-horse  that  was  kept  in  the  stable 
only  as  a  reminiscence,  and  tied  the  friar's 
body  on  to  him  with  many  cords;  they 
opened  the  stable  door  and  pricked  the 
old  war-horse  with  their  daggers  that  he 
clattered  out  into  the  road  with  a  bound 
and  a  great  rattling  of  rusty  armor. 

Now  as  ill  luck  would  have  it.  Friar 
Richard  and  his  borrowed  mare  were 
pacing  demurely  through  the  town  scarce 
fifty  yards  ahead.  The  old  horse  nosed 
the  mare,  and.  being  left  to  choose  his 
road,  took  very  naturally  after  her;  but 
when  he  got  near  her  1  he  monk  looked 
round  and  saw  the  ghastly  rider.  He 
gave  a  yell  so  piercing  it  waked  the 
whole  street,  and,  for  lack  of  spurs. 
drove  his  bare  heels  into  the  mare's  side : 
she  cantered  down  the  street  at  an  easy 
pace,  the  fearful  pageant  cantered  after 
the  friar  kept  turning'  and  yelling,  and 
the  windows  kepi  opening  and  heads 
popped  out  to  see,  and  by-and-by  doors 
opened  and  a  few  early  risers  joined  in 
the  pursuit,  wondering  and  curious. 

The  cavalcade  never  cleared  the  town 
of  Norwich  ;  the  friar,  in  the  wildness  of 
despair,  turned  his  mare  up  what-  seemed 
to  him  an  open  lane  ;  but  there  was  no 
exit ;  his  dead  pursuer  came  up  with  him, 
and  he  .threw  himself  off.  and  cried, 
"Mercy  !  mercy  !  mea  culpa  !— I  confess 
it !  I  confess  it !  only  take  that  horrible 
face  from  me  !  "  and  in  his  despair  he 
owned  that  he  had  slain  Brother  John. 

Then  some  led  the  horse  and  his  ghastly 
load  away,  and  wondered  sore  ;  but  others 
hauled  Friar  Richard  to  justice ;  and  he, 
believing  it  was  a  miracle,  and  Heaven's 
hand  upon  him,  persisted  in  his  confes- 
sion, and  was  cast  into  prison  to  abide 
his  trial. 


THE  KNIGHTS  SECRET. 


151 


Ho  had  not  to  wait  long-.  In  those 
days  the  law  did  not  tarry  for  judges  of 
assize  to  come  round  the  country  now 
and  then.  Each  town  had  its  inaj-or  and 
its  aldermen,  any  one  of  whom  could  try 
and  hang  a  man  if  need  was.  So  Friar 
Richard  was  tried  next  week. 

By  this  time  he  had  somewhat  recov- 
ered his  spirits  and  his  love  of  life :  he 
defended  himself,  and  said  that  indeed  he 
had  slain  his  brother,  but  it  was  by  mis- 
adventure ;  he  had  thrown  a  stone  at  him 
in  some  anger,  but  not  to  do  him  deadly 
harm.  This  he  said  with  many  tears. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  proved 
that  he  had  long  hated  Brother  John  ; 
that  he  had  got  out  of  the  priory  without 
passing  the  door,  and  had  borrowed  the 
maltster's  mare  on  a  false  pretense;  and 
finally,  marks  of  strangulation  had  been 
found  on  the  dead  man's  throat.  All  this 
amazed  and  overpowered  the  poor  friar, 
and  although  his  terror  at  the  apparition 
was  not  easily  to  be  reconciled  with  his 
having  been  the  person  who  tied  the  body 
on  the  horse,  and  though  one  alderman, 
shrewder  than  the  rest,  said  he  thought  a 
great  deal  lay  behind  that,  yet,  upon  the 
whole,  it  was  thought  the  safest  and  most 
usual  course  to  hang  him.  So  he  was 
condemned  to  die — in  three  days'  time. 

The  friar,  seeing  his  end  so  near,  strug- 
gled no  more  against  his  fate.  He  sent 
for  the  prior  to  confess  him,  and  told  the 
truth  with  deep  sorrow  and  humility  : 
"Mea  culpa!  mea  culpa  !"  he  cried.  "If 
I  had  not  hated  my  brother  and  broken 
our  rule,  then  this  had  not  come  upon 
me  !  " 

Then  the  prior  gave  him  full  absolu- 
tion, and  went  away  exceeding  sorrow- 
ful, and  doubting  the  wisdom  and  justice 
of  laymen,  and  in  particular  of  those  who 
were  about  to  hang  Brother  Richard  for 
willful  murder.  This  preyed  upon  his 
mind,  and  he  went  to  Sir  Thomas  Erping- 
ham  to  utter  his  misgivings,  and  pray 
the  good  knight  to  work  upon  the  sheriff, 
who  was  his  friend,  for  a  respite  until  the 
matter  could  be  looked  into  more  closely. 

The  knight  was  not  at  home,  but  my 
lady  saw  the  prior,  and  learned  his  er- 
rand.     "Alas,   g-ood  father,"   said   she, 


"  Sir  Thomas  is  not  here  ;  he  is  gone  to 
London  this  two  days." 

The  prior  went  home  sick  at  heart. 

Even  so  long  ago  as  this  they  hanged 
from  Norwich  Castle.  So  the  rude  gal- 
lows was  put  up  at  seven  o'clock,  and  at 
eight  Brother  Richard  must  hang  and 
turn  in  the  wind  like  a  weather-cock. 

But  before  that  fatal  hour  a  king's  mes- 
senger galloped  into  the  city  and  spurred 
into  the  courtyard  of  the  castle.  Very 
soon  the  sheriff  was  reading  a  parchment 
signed  by  the  king's  own  hand  :  the  gal- 
lows was  taken  clown,  and  the  people  dis- 
persed by  degrees.  Some  felt  ill  used. 
They  thought  appointments  should  be 
kept,  or  else  not  made. 

At  night  Friar  Richard,  not  reprieved, 
but,  to  the  amazement  of  smaller  func- 
tionaries, freely  pardoned  by  his  sover- 
eign, in  a  handwriting  a  house-maid  of 
this  day  would  blush  for,  but  with  a  glori- 
ous seal  the  size  of  an  apple  fritter,  crept 
forth  into  the  night,  and,  gliding-  along 
the  streets  with  his  head  down,  slipped 
into  the  priory,  and  was  lost  to  the  world 
for  many  a  long  day.  Indeed,  he  was 
confined  to  his  cell  for  a  month  by  order 
of  the  prior,  and  ordered  to  pray  thrice  a 
day  for  the  soul  of  Brother  John. 

When  Brother  Richard  emerged  from 
his  cell  he  was  a  changed  man.  He  had 
gathered,  amid  the  thorns  of  tribula- 
tion, the  wholesome  fruit  of  humility, 
and  the  immortal  flower  of  charity. 
Henceforth  no  bitter  word  ever  fell  from 
his  lips,  though  for  a  time  he  had  many 
provocations,  and  "Honi  soit  qui  mal  y 
pense "  was  the  rule  of  his  heart.  He 
made  himself  of  little  account,  and  out- 
lived all  enmities.  He  lived  much  in  his 
cell,  and  prayed  so  often  for  the  soul  of 
Brother  John  that  at  last  he  got  to  love 
him  dead  whom  he  had  hated  living. 

Time  rolled  on.  The  knight's  hair 
turned  gray,  and  the  good  prior  died. 

Then  there  was  a  great  commotion  in 
the  little  priory,  and  three  or  four  of  the 
leading  friars  each  hoped  to  be  prior. 

That  appointment  lay  with  Sir  Thomas 
Erpingham.  He  attended  the  funeral 
of  the  late  prior,  and  then  desired  the 
sub-prior  to  convene  the  monks.     "  Good 


152 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


brothers,"  said  he,  "your  prior  is  Broth- 
er Richard.  I  pray  you  to  invest  him 
forthwith,  and  yield  him  due  love  and 
obedience/' 

The  knight  retired,  and  the  monks 
stared  at  each  other  a  while,  and  then 
obeyed,  since  there  was  no  help  for  it : 
they  invested  Brother  Richard  in  due 
form;  and  such  is  the  magic  of  station 
that,  in  one  moment,  they  began  to  look 
on  him  with  different  eyes. 

The  new  prior  bore  his  dignity  so 
meekly  that  he  disarmed  all  hostility. 
His  great  rule  of  life  was  still  "  Honi 
soit  qui  iikiI  y  pense,"  and  there  is  no 
course  in.. it  apt  to  conciliate  respecl 
and  good-will.  The  knighl  showed  him 
favor  and  esteem ;  tin1  monks  learned  to 
respecl  and  by-and-byto  revere  him;  hut: 
he  never  ceased  to  reproach  himself,  and 
say  massesf or  the  soul  of  Brother  John. 

The  \  ears  rolled  on.  The  knight's  gray 
hair  turned  while;  and  one  day  he  senl 
for  1  lie  prior,  and  said  to  him,  "  <  food 
fa1  her.  1  have  grave  mat  ber  i<>  entertain 
you  withal." 

•■  Speak,  worshipful  sir,"  said  the  prior. 

The  knight  looked  at  linn  awhile,  but- 
seemed  ill  at  ease,  and  us  one  thai  hath 
resolved  to  speak,  bul  is  loath  to  begin. 
At  lasl  In'  said,  "Sir.  there  be  men  thai 
waste  their  goods  in  sin,  or  meanly  hoard 
them  till  their  hist  hour,  yet  leave  them 
freely  to  Mother  Church  after  their 
death,  when  they  can  no  longer  enjoy 
them.  Others  there  be  whose  breasts 
are  laden  with  a  secret  crime  they  ought 
to  confess,  and  clear  some  worthy  man 
suspected  falsely:  yet  they  will  not  tell 
till  they  come  to  die.  Methinks  this  is  to 
be  charitable  too  late,  and  just  when  jus- 
tice can  neither  cost  a  man  aught  nor 
profit  his  neighbor.  Therefore,  not  to  be 
one  of  these,  I  will  reveal  to  you  now  a 
deed  that  sits  heavy  on  my  conscience." 

"  You  would  confess  to  me,  my  son?  " 

"As  man  to  man,  sir,  but  not  as  peni- 
tent to  his  confessor  ;  for  that  were  no 
merit  in  me  :  it  would  be  no  more  than 
bury  my  secret  in  a  fleshly  grave.  Nay, 
what  I  tell  to  you,  you  shall  tell  to  all 
the  world,  if  good  may  come  of  it." 

Here    the   knisrht  sighed,  and   seemed 


much  distempered,  lika  one  who  wrestleth 
with  himself.  Then  he  cast  about  how 
he  should  begin,  and  to  conclude  he 
opened  the  matter  thus:  "Sir,  please 
.you  read  that  letter ;  it  was  writ  by 
Brother  John  unto  my  wife." 

The  prior  read  it.  but  said  never  a  word. 

•■Sir."  said  the  knight,  -'do  you  re- 
member a  sad  time  when  you  lay  in  Nor- 
wich jail  accused  of  murder  and  cast  for 
death?" 

"I  do  remember  it  well,  sir,  and  the 
uncharitable  heart  that  brought  me  to 
thai  pass." 

"  While  you  lay  there,  sir.  something 
befell  elsewhere,  which  I  will  hide  no 
longer,  from  you.  The  king  being  at  his 
palace  iii  London,  a  knight  who  had 
fought  by  Ins  side  in  France  sought  an 
audience  in  private.  It  was  granted  him 
a1  once.  Then  the  knight  fell  on  his 
knees    to    the    king,    and    begged    that 

his  life  and  lands  might  be  spared. 
though  he  had  slain  a  man  in  licit  of 
blood.  The  king  was  grave  bul  gentle, 
and  then  1  showed  him  that  letter,  and 
owned  the  truth,  that  1  and  my  servant, 
in  our  fury,  had  strangled  that   hapless 

-•  .Mas!  sir,  did  you  lake  my  guilt  upon 
yourself  to  save  my  life,  so  fully  forfeit? 
'Twas  1  who  hated  him;  "twas  I  who 
flung  the  stone." 

••  At  a  dead  body.  I  tell  thee,  man, 
we  strangled  him,  and  set  his  body  up 
where  you  saw  it  :  hand  in  his  death  you 
had  none." 

The  prior  uttered  a  strange  cry,  and 
was  silent.  The  knight  continued,  in  a 
low  voice : 

••  We  set  him  in  the  yard  ;  and  when 
we  found  him  in  the  porch,  being  half 
mad  with  terror  and  drink  together,  we 
bound  him  on  the  horse  and  launched 
him.  All  this  I  told  the  king,  and  he, 
considering  the  provocation,  and  pitying 
too  much  his  old  companion  in  arms, 
gave  me  my  life  and  lands,  and  gave  me 
thine,  which,  indeed,  was  but  bare  jus- 
tice. So  now,  sir.  you  know  that  you 
are  innocent  of  bloodshed,  and  His  I  am 
guilty." 

The  knight  looked  at  the  churchman, 


A    SPECIAL    CONSTABLE. 


153 


and  thought  to  see  him  break  forth  into 
thanksgivings.  But  it  was  not  so.  The 
prior  was  deeply  moved,  but  not  exultant. 
"Sir,"  said  he,  like  a  man  that  is  near 
choking,  "let  me  go  to  my  cell  and  think 
over  this  strange  tidings." 

"  And  pray  for  me,  I  do  implore  you," 
said  the  knight. 

"  Ay,  sir,  and  with  all  my  heart." 

Some  days  passed,  and  the  knight 
looked  to  hear  his  own  tale  come  round 
again.  But  no  ;  the  prior  was  silent  as 
the  grave.  Then  after  a  while  the 
knight  sent  for  him  again,  and  said, 
"  Good  father,  what  I  told  you  was  not 
under  seal  of  confession." 

"  I  know  it,  sir,"  said  the  prior.  "  Yet 
will  it  go  no  further,  unless  1  should  out- 
live you  by  God's  will.  Alas  !  sir,  you 
have  taken  from  me  that  which  was  the 
health  of  my  soul,  nvy  belief  that  I  had 
slain  him  I  hated  so  unchristian-like. 
This  belief  it  made  humility  easy  to  me, 
and   even    charity   not    difficult.     What 


engine  of  wholesome  mortification  would 
be  left  me  now,  were  I  to  go  a-prating 
that  I  slew  not  the  brother  I  hated  ? 
Nay,  I  will  never  tell  the  truth,  but 
carry  my  precious  burden  of  humility  all 
my  days." 

"  Oh,  saint  upon  earth  !  "  cried  the 
knight.  "  Outlive  me,  and  then  tell  the 
truth." 

The  monk  replied  not,  but  pondered 
these  words. 

And  it  fell  out  so  that  the  knight  died 
three  years  after,  and  the  prior  closed  his 
eyes,  and  said  masses  for  his  soul ;  and 
a  good  while  afterward  he  did,  for  the 
honor  of  the  convent,  reveal  this  true 
story  to  two  young  monks,  but  bound 
them  by  a  solemn  vow  not  to  spread  it 
during  his  life.  After  his  death  the 
truth  got  abroad,  and  among  churchmen 
the  prior  was  much  revered,  for  that  he 
had  cured  himself  of  an  uncharitable 
heart,  and  had  enforced  on  himself  the 
penalty  of  unjust  shame  so  many  years. 


A    SPECIAL    CONSTABLE. 


Two  women,  sisters,  kept  the  toll-bar 
at  a  village  in  Yorkshire.  It  stood  apart 
from  the  village,  a.ud  they  often  felt  un- 
easy at  night,  being  lone  women. 

One  day  they  received  a  considerable 
sum  of  money,  bequeathed  them  by  a 
relation,  and  that  set  the  simple  souls  all 
in  a  flutter. 

They  had  a  friend  in  the  village,  the 
blacksmith's  wife  ;  so  they  went  and  told 
her  their  fears.  She  admitted  that  theirs 
was  a  lonesome  place,  and  she  would  not 
live  there,  for  one — without  a  man.  Her 
discourse  sent  them  home  downright  mis- 
erable. 

The  blacksmith's  wife  told  her  husband 
all  about  it  when  he  came  in  for  his  din- 
ner.     "The  fools!"  said  he:    "how  is 


anybody  to  know  they  have  got  brass  in 
the  house  ?  " 

"  Well,"  said  the  wife,  "they  make  no 
secret  of  it  to  me;  but  you  need  not  go 
for  to  tell  it  to  all  the  town — poor 
souls  ! " 

"  Not  I,"  said  the  man  :  "  but  they  will 
publish  it,  never  fear;  leave  women-folk 
alone  for  making  their  own  trouble  with 
their  tongues." 

There  the  subject  dropped,  as  man  and 
wife  have  things  to  talk  about  besides 
their  neighbors.  The  old  women  at  the 
toll-bar,  what  with  their  own  fears  and 
their  Job's  comforter,  began  to  shiver 
with  apprehension  as  night  came  on. 
However,  at  sunset  the  carrier  passed 
through  the  gate,  and  at   sight  of   his 


154 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


friendly  face  they  brightened  up.  They 
told  him  their  care,  and  begged  him  to 
sleep  in  the  house  that  night.     "  Why. 

how  can  I  ?  "  said  he.    "  I'm  due  at ; 

but  I  will  leave  you  my  dog."  The  dog 
was  a  powerful  mastiff. 

The  women  looked  at  each  other  ex- 
pressively. "  He  Won't  hurt  us,  will  he? " 
sighed  one  of  them,  faintly.  "Not  he," 
said  the  carrier,  cheerfully.  Then  he 
called  the  dog  into  the  house,  and  told 
them  to  lock  the  door:  and  went  away 
whistling. 

The  women  were  left  contemplating  the 
dog  with  that  tender  interest  apprehen- 
sion is  sure  to  excite.  Al  first  he  seemed 
staggered  a1  this  off-hand  proceeding  of 
his  master j  it  confused  him:  then  he 
snuffed  at  the  door;  then,  as  the  wheels 
retreated,  he  began  to  see  plainly  he  was 
an  abandoned  dog;  he  delivered  a  fear- 
ful howl,  and  Hew  at  the  door,  scratching 
and  barking  furiously. 

The  old  women  fled  the  aparl  menl .  and 
were    next     seen    at     an     upper     window. 

screaming  to  the  carrier.     "Come  back  ! 

come  back.  John  !  He  is  tearing  the 
house   down.'" 

"Drat  the  varmint! "said  John,  and 
came  hack".  On  the  road  he  though) 
what   washes!   lobe  done.      The  good  nafr- 

ured  fellow  took  Ins  great-coal  out  of 
the  carl,   and    laid  it  down    on  the   floor. 

The  mas!  ill'  instantly  laid  himself  on  it. 
"Now."  said  John,  sternly,  "let  us  have 
no  more  nonsense;  you  take  char-'  of 
that  till  I  come  back,  and  don't  ye  let 
nobody  steal  that  there,  nor  yet  t'  wives' 
brass.  There,  now,"  said  he,  kindly,  to 
the  women.  "  I  shall  be  back  this  way 
breakfast-time,  and  he  won't  budge  till 
then." 

"  And  he  won't  hurt  vs.  John  ?  " 
"  Lord  no.  Bless  your  heart,  he  is  as 
sensible  as  any  Christian  :  only,  Lord- 
sake,  women,  don't  ye  go  to  take  the  coat 
from  him,  or  you'll  be  wanting  a  new 
gown  yourself,  and  maybe  a  petticoat 
and  all." 

He  retired,  and  the  old  women  kept  at 
a  respectful  distance  from  their  protector. 
He  never  molested  them  :  and  indeed, 
when  they  spoke  cajolingly  to  him,  he 


even  wagged  his  tail  in  a  dubious  way  ; 
but  still,  as  they  moved  about  he  squinted 
at  them  out  of  his  blood-shot  eye  in  a  way 
that  checked  all  desire  on  their  parts  to 
try  on  the  carrier's  coat. 

Thus  protected,  they  went  to  bed 
earlier  than  usual;  but  they  did  not 
undress ;  they  were  too  much  afraid  of 
everything,  especially  their  protector. 
The  night  wore  on,  and  presently  then- 
sharpened  senses  let  them  know  thai  the 
dog  was  getting  restless  :  he  snuffed  and 
then  he  growled,  and  then  he  got  up  and 
pattered  about,  muttering  to  himself. 
Straightway,  with  furniture,  they  bar- 
ricaded the  door  through  which  their 
protector  must  pass  to  devour  them. 
Bui  by-and-by,  listening  acutely,  they 
heard  a  scraping  and  a  grating  outside 
the  window  of  the  room  where  the  dog 
wis:  and  he  continued  growling  low. 
This  was  enough  :  they  slipped  out  at 
the  back-door,  and  left  their  money  to 
save  their  lives:  they  got  into  the  vil- 
lage, li  was  pitch-dark,  and  all  the 
houses  black  but  two:  one  was  the 
public-house,  casting  a  triangular  gleam 
across  the  road  a  long  way  oil.  anil  the 
other  was  the  blacksmith's  house.  Here 
was  a  piece  of  fortune  for  the  terrified 
women.  They  burst  into  their  friend's 
house.  "•  <  >h.  Jane  !  the  t  hieves  are 
come  !  "  and  they  told  her  in  a  few 
words  all  that    had  happened. 

"La!"  said  she;  " how  timorsome 
you  are!  ten  to  one  he  was  only  growl- 
ing at  some  one  that  passed  by." 

••  Nay,  Jane,  we  heard  the  scraping 
outside  the  window.  Oh,  woman,  call 
your  man,  and  let  him  go  with  us." 

"My  man — he  is  not  here." 

"  Where  is  he,  then  ?  " 

"  I  suppose  he  is  where  other  working- 
women's  husbands  are,  at  the  public- 
house,"  said  she,  rather  bitterly,  for 
she  had  her  experience. 

The  old  women  wanted  to  go  to  the 
public-house  for  him :  but  the,  black- 
smith's wife  was  a  courageous  woman, 
and.  besides,  she  thought  it  was  most 
likely  a  false  alarm.  "Nay,  nay,"  said 
she,  "'  last  time  I  went  for  him  there  I 
got  a  fine  affront.     I'll  come  with  you," 


S  USPENDED    ANIMA  TION. 


155 


said  she.  "  I'll  take  the  poker,  and  we 
have  got  our  tongues  to  raise  the  town 
with,  1  suppose/'  So  they  marched  to 
the  toll-bar.  When  they  got  near  it, 
they  saw  something-  that  staggered  this 
heroine.  There  was  actually  a  man  half 
in  and  half  out  of  the  window.  This 
brought,  the  blacksmith's  wife  to  a 
stand-still,  and  the  timid  pair  implored 
her  to  go  back  to  the  village.  "Nay," 
said  she,  "what  for?  I  see  but  one — 
and — hark  !  it  is  my  belief  the  dog  is 
holding  of  him."  However,  she  thought 
it  safest  to  be  on  the  same  side  with 
the  dog,  lest  the  man  might  turn  on 
her. 

So  she  made  her  way  into  the  kitchen, 
followed  by  the  other  two  ;  and  there  a 
sight  met  their  eyes  that  changed  all 
their  feelings,  both  toward  the  robber 
and  toward  each  other.  The  great  mas- 
tiff had  pinned  a  man  by  the  throat,  and 
was  pulling  at  him.  to  draw  him  through 
the  window,  with  fierce  but  muffled 
snarls.  The  man's  weight  alone  pre- 
vented it.  The  window  was  like  a  pict- 
ure-frame,   and    in    that    frame    there 


glared,  with  lolling  tongue  and  starting 
eyes,  the  white  face  of  the  blacksmith, 
their  courageous  friend's  villainous  hus- 
band. She  uttered  an  appalling  scream, 
and  flew  upon  the  dog  and  choked  him 
with  her  two  hands.  He  held,  and 
growled,  and  tore  till  he  was  all  but 
throttled  himself,  then  he  let  go,  and 
the  man  fell.  But  what  struck  the 
ground  outside,  like  a  lump  of  lead, 
was,  in  truth,  a  lump  of  clay  :  the  man 
was  quite  dead,  and  fearfully  torn  about 
the  throat.  So  did  a  comedy  end  in  an 
appalling  and  most  piteous  tragedy  ;  not 
that  the  scoundrel  himself  deserved  any 
pity,  but  his  poor,  brave,  honest  wife,  to 
whom  he  had  not  dared  to  confide  the 
villainy  he  meditated. 

The  outlines  of  this  true  story  were  in 
several  journals.  I  have  put  the  dis- 
jointed particulars  together  as  well  as 
I  could.  I  have  tried  to  learn  the  name 
of  the  village,  and  what  became  of  this 
poor  widow,  but  have  failed  hitherto. 
Should  these  lines  meet  the  eye  of  any 
one  who  can  tell  me,  I  hope  he  will,  and 
without  delay. 


SUSPENDED   ANIMATION. 


A  journal  called  the  Los  Angeles 
Star  recorded  the  following  incident  at 
the  time  it  occurred  : 

A  gentleman  in  that  city  had  a  very 
large  and  beautiful  tomcat,  which  he  had 
reared  from  a  kitten.  It  was  now  five 
years  old,  and  the  two  animals  were 
mutually  attached.  Every  morning, 
when  the  servant  brought  in  the  water 
for  his  master's  tub,  puss  used  to  come 
in  and  sit  at  the  side  of  the  bed,  and  gaze 
with  admiration  at  his  employer,  and 
sometimes  mew  him  out,  but  retired  into 
a  corner  during  the  tubbing,  which  he 
thought  irrational,  and  came  out  again 


when  the  biped  was  clothed  and  in  his 
right  mind.  One  day  the  cat  was  seen  in 
the  garden,  tumbling  over  and  over  in 
strong  convulsions,  which  ended  in  its 
crawling  feebly  into  the  house.  The 
master  heard,  and  was  very  sorry,  and 
searched  for  the  invalid,  but  could  not 
find  him.  However,  when  he  went  up  to 
bed  at  night,  there  was  the  poor  creature 
stretched  upon  the  floor  at  the  side  of  the 
bed,  the  very  place  where  he  used  to  sit 
and  gaze  at  his  master,  and  mew  him  out 
of  bed. 

The  gentleman  was  affected  to  tears  by 
the  affectionate  creature's  death,  and  his 


156 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


coming-  there  to  die.  He  threw  a  hand- 
kerchief over  poor  Tom,  and  passed  a 
downright  unhappy  night.  He  deter- 
mined, however,  to  bury  his  humble 
friend,  and  no  time  was  to  be  lost,  the 
weather  being-  hot.  So,  when  his  servant 
came  in  to  fill  his  tub,  he  ordered  a  little 
grave  to  he  dug  directly,  and  a  box  found 
of  a  suitable  size  to  receive  the  remains. 

Then  he  got  up,  and  instead  of  tubbing, 
as  usual,  he  thought  he  would  wash  poor 
Tom's  body  for  interment,  for  it  was  all 
stained  and  dirty  with  the  mould  of  the 
garden. 

He  took  the  body  up,  and  dropped  it 
into  the  water  with  a  souse. 

That  souse  was  sunn  followed  by  a 
furious  splashing  that-  sent  the  water  Hy- 
ing in  his  lace  and  all  about  therooin, 
and  away  flew  the  cat  through  the  open 
window,  as  ,f  possessed  by  a  devil.  Nor 
did  the  poor  body  forgive  tins  hydro- 
pathic treatment,  although  successful. 
He  took  a  perverse  view,  and  had  never 
returned  in  the  imuse  "  up  to  the  time  of 
our  going  to  press."  says  the  Los  Angeles 

Star. 

The  cat  Is  not  the  only  animal  subject 
to  suspension  of  vital  power.  Many  men 
and  women  have  been  buried  alive  in  this 
condition,  especially  on  the  Continent, 
where  the  law  enforces  speedy  inter- 
ment. Even  in  Britain  —  where  they 
do  not  shovel  one  into  the  earth  quite 
so  fast— live  persons  have  been  buried, 
and  others  have  had  a  narrow  escape.  1 
could  give  a.  volume  of  instances  at  home 
and  abroad — one  of  them  an  archbishop, 
who  was  actually  being  carried  in  funeral 
procession  on  an  open  bier,  when  he  came 
to,  and  objected,  in  what  terms  I  know 
not ;  but  the  Scotch  have  an  excellent 
formula  in  similar  cases.  It  runs  thus  : 
"Bide  ye  yet.  mon ;  I  hae  a  deal  mair 
mischief  to  do  firrrst  !  " 

Two  recent  English  cases  I  could  certify 
to  he  true  :  one  a  little  girl  at  Nuneaton, 
who  lay  several  days  without  signs  of 
life ;  another,  a  young  lady,  not  known 
to  the  public,  but  to  me.  She  was  dead, 
in  medicine  ;  but  her  mother  refused  to 
let  her  be  buried,  because  there  was  no 


sign  of  decomposition,  and  she  did  not 
get  so  deadly  cold  as  others  had  whom 
that  mother  had  lost  by  death. 

This  girl  remained  unburied  some  days, 
till  another  of  God's  creatures  put  m  his 
word  :  a  fly  thought  her  worth  biting, 
and  blood  trickled  from  the  bite.  That 
turned  the  scale  of  opinion,  and  the  girl 
was  recovered,  and  is  alive  to  this  day. 
However,  the  curious  reader'who  desires 
to  work  this  vein  need  go  no  further  than 
the  index  of  the  Aim  mil  "Register  and  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine.  As  for  me,  I 
must  not  be  tempted  outside  my  imme- 
diate subject.  The  parallel  I  shall  con- 
tine  a  very  Large  theme  to  is  exact. 

At  the  opening  of  the  century  the  pub- 
lic facilities  for  anatomy  were  less  than 
now:  so  then  robbing  the  churchyards 
was  quite  a  trade,  and  an  egotist  or  two 
did  worse— they  killed  people  for  the  small 
sum  a  dead  body  fetched. 

Well,  a  male  body  was  brought  to  a 
surgeon  by  a  man  he  had  often 
employed,  and  the  pair  lumped  it  down 
on  the  dissecting  table,  and  then  the  ven- 
der received  his  money  and  went. 

The  anatomist  set  to  work  to  open  the 
body;  but.  in  handling  it,  he  fancied  the 
limbs  were  not  so  rigid  as  usual,  and  ho 
took  another  look.  Yes.  the  man  was 
dead  ;  no  pulsation  either.  And  yet 
somehow  he  was  not  quite  cold  about 
the   region    of   tie-    heart. 

The  surgeon  doubted  :  he  was  a  humane 
man  :  and  so.  instead  of  making  a  fine 
transverse  cut  like  that  at  which  the 
unfortunate  author  of  "  Manon  Lescaut," 
started  out  of  his  trance  with  a  shriek  to 
die  in  right  earnest,  he  gave  the  poor 
body  a  chance  ;  applied  hartshorn,  vine- 
gar, and  friction,  all  without  success. 
Still  he  had  his  doubts  ;  though,  to  he 
frank.  I  am  not  clear  why  he  still 
doubted. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  he  called  in  his 
assistant,  and  they  took  the  body  into 
the  yard,  turned  a  high  tap  on,  and  dis- 
charged a  small  hut  hard-hitting  column 
of  water  on  to  the  patient. 

No  effect  was  produced  but  this,  which 
an  unscientific  eye  might  have  passed 
over :  the   skin  turned   slightly  pink  in 


LAMBERTS  LEAP. 


157 


one  or  two  places  under  the  fall  of 
water. 

The  surgeon  thought  this  a  strong 
proof  life  was  not  extinct ;  but,  not  to 
overdo  it,  he  wrapped  the  man  in  blank- 
ets for  a  time,  and  then  drenched  him 
again,  letting  the  water  strike  him  hard 
on  the  head  and  the  heart  in  particu- 
lar. 

He  followed  this  treatment  up,  till  at 
last  the  man's  eyes  winked,  and  then  he 
gasped,  and  presently  he  gulped,  and 
bj'-and-by  he  groaned,  and  eventually  ut- 
tered loud  and  fearful  cries  as  one  bat- 
tling with  death. 

In  a  word,  he  came  to,  and  the  surgeon 
put  him  into  a  warm  bed,  and  as  medi- 
cine has  its  fashions,  and  bleeding  was 
t  he  panacea  of  that  day,  he  actually  took 
blood  from  the  poor  body.  This  ought 
to  have  sent  him  back  to  the  place  from 
whence  he  came — the  grave,  to  wit ;  but 
somehow  it  did  not :  and  next  day  the' re- 
viver showed  him  with  pride  to  several 
visitors,  and  prepared  an  article. 


Resurrectus  was  well  fed,  and,  being  a 
pauper,  was  agreeable  to  lie  in  that  bed 
forever,  and  eat  the  bread  of  science. 
But,  as  years  rolled  on,  his  preserver  got 
tired  of  that.  However,  he  had  to  give 
him  a  suit  of  his  own  clothes  to  get  rid 
of  him.  Did  I  say  years  ?  I  must  have 
meant  days. 

He  never  did  get  rid  of  him  ;  the  fellow 
used  to  call  at  intervals  and  demand  char- 
ity, urging  that  the  surgeon  had  taken 
him  out  of  a  condition  in  which  he  felt 
neither  hunger,  thirst,  nor  misery,  and 
so  was  now  bound  to  supply  his  natural 
needs. 

However,  I  will  not  dwell  on  this  pain- 
ful part  of  the  picture,  lest  learned  and 
foreseeing  men  should,  from  the  date  of 
reading  this  article,  confine  resuscitation 
to  quadrupeds. 

To  conclude  with  the  medical  view.  To 
resuscitate  animals  who  seem  dead,  but 
are  secretly  alive,  drop  them  into  water 
from — or  else  drop  water  on  them  from — 

A  SUFFICIENT  HEIGHT. 


LAMBERT'S   LEAP. 


Near  Newcastle  is  Sandy-ford  Bridge, 
thirty-six  feet  above  the  river,  which, 
like  many  Northern  streams,  is  seldom 
quite  full,  but  flows  in  a  channel,  with  the 
rocky  bed  bare  on  each  side  :  an  ugly 
bridge  to  look  up  to  or  to  look  over,  driv- 
ing by. 

In  Scotland  and  the  north  of  England, 
when  our  wise  ancestors  got  hold  of  so 
dizzy  and  dangerous  a  place,  they  made 
the  most  of  it ;  with  incredible  perver- 
sity, they  led  the  approach  to  such  a 
bridge  either  down  a  steep  or  nearly  at 
right  angles.  They  carried  Sandy-ford 
Lane  up  to  the  bridge  on  the  rectangular 
plan,  and  thereby  secured  two  events, 
which  were  but  the  natural  result  of 
their    skill    in    road-making,   yet,   taken 


in  conjunction,  have  other  claims  to 
notice. 

At  a  date  I  hope  some  day  to  ascertain 
precisely,  but  at  present  I  can  only  say 
that  it  was  very  early  in  the  present  cen- 
tury, a  young  gentleman  called  Lambert 
was  run  away  with  by  his  horse ;  the 
animal  came  tearing  down  Sandy-ford 
Lane,  and,  thanks  to  ancestral  wisdom 
aforesaid,  charged  the  bridge  with  such 
momentum  and  impetus  that  he  knocked 
a  slice  of  the  battlement  and  half  a  ton  of 
masonry  into  the  air,  and  went  down 
after  it  into  the  river  with  his  rider. 

The  horse  was  killed  ;  Mr.  Lambert, 
though  shaken,  was  not  seriously  injured 
by  this  awful  leap.  The  masonry  was  re- 
paired ;  and,   to   mark  the   event,    these 


15S 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


words,  "Lambert's  Leap,*'  were  en- 
graved on  the  new  coping-stone.  The 
road  was  allowed  to  retain  its  happy 
angle. 

December  5,  1822,  about  eleven,  fore- 
noon, Mr.  John  Nicholson,  of  Newcastle, 
a  student  in  surgery,  was  riding  in  San- 
dy-ford Lane.  His  horse  ran  away  with 
him,  and.  being  unable  to  take  the  sharp 
turn  for  such  cases  made  and  provided, 
ran  against  the  battlement  oi  the  bridge. 
It  resisted  this  time,  and  brought  the 
horse  to  his  knees ;  but  the  animal,  being 
now  thoroughly  terrified,  rose  and  actual- 
ly leaped  or  scrambled  over  the  battle- 
ment, and  fell  into  the  rocky  bed  below, 


carrying  away  a  single  coping-stone,  viz., 
the  stone  engraved  "  Lambert's  Leap.'' 
That  stone  was  broken  to  pieces  by  the 
fall.  The  poor  young  man  was  so  cruelly 
injured  that  he  never  spoke  again  ;  he 
died  at  seven  o'clock  that  evening ;  but 
the  horse  was  so  little  the  worse,  and  so 
tamed  by  the  fall,  that  he  was  at  once 
ridden  into  Newcastle  for  assistance. 

The  reversed  fates  of  the  two  animals, 
ami  the  two  incidents  happening  within 
an  inch  of  each  other,  have  earned  them 
a  place  in  this  collection. 

Richardson's  Local  Historian's  Table- 
Book  relates  the  second  leap,  and  refers 
to  the  first,  which  is  also  authenticated. 


MAN'S    LIFE    SAVED    BY    FOWLS,   AND 
WOMAN'S    BY   A   PIG. 


Men's  lives  have  been  sometimes  taken, 
sometimes  saved,  by  other  animals,  in 
ways  that  sound  incredible  until  the  de- 
tails are  given. 

Here  is  a  list  that  offers  a  glimpse  into 
the  subject,  nothing  more  : 

1.  Several  ships  and   crews   destroyed 
by  fish. 

2.  Two  ships  and  crews  saved  by  fish. 

3.  One  crew  saved  by  a  dog. 

4.  Many  men  killed  by  dogs,  and  many 
saved. 

.">.  Many    men    killed    by   horses,    and 
many  saved. 

6.  Men  killed,  and  saved,  by  rats. 

7.  Man  killed  by  a  dead  pig. 

s.  Woman  saved  from  death  by  a  live 

piS- 

9.  Man  saved  by  fowls. 

10.  Ditto  by  a  crocodile. 

11.  Ditto  by  a  lady-bird. 

12.  One  man  executed  by  the  act  of  a 
horse. 

13.  Crows  leading  to  the  execution  of 
murderers. 

14.  A  man's  life  saved  by  an  ape. 


15.  Ditto  by  a  bear. 

1G.  Ditto  by  a  fox. 

Some  of  these  sound  like  riddles,  and 
are  at  least  as  well  worth  puzzling  over 
as  acrostics  and  conundra. 

I  will  leave  the  majority  to  rankle  in 
my  reader,  and  rouse  his  curiositj'.  But 
I  feel  he  is  entitled  to  some  immediate 
proof  that  i  he  w  hole  list  is  not  a  romance  ; 
so  I  will  relate  8  and  9,  by  way  of  speci- 
men. 

And  here  let  me  promise  that,  as  a 
general  rule,  I  exclude  from  this  collec- 
tion all  those  wonderful  stories  about 
animals  which  are  found  only  in  books 
especially  devoted  to  that  subject.  Those 
writers  are  all  theorists — men  with  an 
amiable  bias  in  favor  of  the  inferior  ani- 
mals. This  tempts  them  to  twist  and 
exaggerate  facts,  and  even  to  repeat 
stale  falsehoods  which  have  gone  the 
round  for  \-ears,  but  never  rested  on  the 
evidence  of  an  eye-witness. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  some  plain 
man,  who  has  no  theory,  writes  down  a 
story  at  the  time  and  on  the  spot,  and 


REALITY. 


159 


sends  it.  off  to  a  newspaper  or  other 
chronicle  of  current  events,  where  it  lies 
open  to  immediate  contradiction,  then  we 
are  on  the  terra  fir  ma  of  history. 

Example. — Here  is  a  letter  written  on 
the  spot  and  at  the  time  to  a  newspaper, 
and  transferred  from  that  newspaper  to 
the  Annual  Register: 

EXTRACT  OF  A  LETTER  FROM  NOTTINGHAM. 
"January  9,  1761. 

"On  Tuesday  sennight  Mr.  Hull's  ser- 
vant, of  Beckingham,  returning-  from 
market,  and  finding-  the  hoat  at  Gains- 
borough putting  off  from  shore  full  of 
people,  was  so  rash  and  imprudent  (to 
say  no  worse  of  it)  as  to  leap  his  horse 
into  the  boat,  and  with  the  violence  of 
the  fall  drove  the  poor  people  and  their 
horses  to  the  further  side,  which  instantly 
carried  the  boat  into  the  middle  of  the 
stream  and  overset  it. 

"Imagine  you  see  the  unfortunate 
sufferers  all  plunging  in  a  deep  and  rapid 
river,  calling  out  for  help  and  struggling 
for  life.  It  was  all  horror  and  confusion  ; 
and  during  this  situation  the  first  account 
was  dispatched,  which  assured  us  that 
out  of  eighty  souls  only  five  or  six  were 
saved.  By  a  second  account  we  were 
told  that  there  were  only  thirty  on  board, 
but  that  out  of  these  above  twenty  had 
been  drowned.  This  was  for  some  time 
believed  to  be  the  truest  account :  but  I 
have  the  pleasure  to  hear  by  a  third  ac- 
count that  many  of  those  who  were  sup- 
posed to  be  lost  have  been  taken  up  alive, 


some  of  them  at  a  great  distance  from  the 
ferry,  and  that  no  more  than  six  are 
missing,  though  numbers  were  brought 
to  life  with  difficulty.  It  was  happy  for 
them  that  so  many  horses  were  on  board, 
as  all  who  had  time  to  lay  hold  of  a  stir- 
rup or  a  horse's  tail  were  brought  safe  to 
shore. 

"A  poor  man  who  had  a  basket  of 
fowls  upon  his  arm  was  providentially 
buoyed  up  till  assistance  could  be  had, 
and  he,  after  many  fruitless  attempts, 
was  at  last  taken  up  alive,  though  sense- 
less, at  a  distance  of  four  hundred  yards 
from  the  ferry. 

"A  poor  woman  who  had  bought  a  pig, 
and  had  tied  one  end  of  a  string  round  its 
foot  and  the  other  round  her  own  wrist, 
was  dragged  safe  to  land  in  this  provi- 
dential manner." 

Observe — I  am  better  than  my  word  ; 
for  I  have  thrown  you  in  the  circum- 
stance that  the  horses  saved  the  rest: 
certainly  in  this  particular  business  the 
lord  of  the  creation  does  not  show  that 
vast  superiority  to  the  brutes  which  he 
assumes  in  some  of  his  sculptures  and 
nearly  all  his  writings,  Butler's  Analogy 
included.  The  animal  that  makes  the 
mischief  by  his  folly  is  a  man ;  the  ani- 
mals that  prove  incompetent  to  save 
their  own  lives  are  the  men.  All  the 
other  animals  in  the  boat,  down  to  the 
very  pig,  turn  to  and  pull  the  lords  and 
ladies  of  the  creation  out  of  the  mess  one 
of  these  peerless  creatures  had  plunged 
them  all  into. 


REALITY. 


Miss  Sophia  Jackson,  in  the  State  of 
Illinois,  was  a  beautiful  girl,  and  had  a 
devoted  lover,  Ephraim  Slade,  a  mer- 
chant's clerk.  Their  attachment  was 
sullenly  permitted     by    Miss    Jackson's 


parents,     but     not    encouraged  :     they 
thought  she  might  look  higher. 

Sophia  said,  "Why,  la!  he  was  hand- 
some and  good,  and  loved  her,  and  was 
not  that  enough  ?  " 


160 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


They  said,  "No;  to  marry  Beauty,  a 
man  ought  to  be  rich." 

"Well,"  said  Sophy,  "he  is  on  the 
way  to  it:  he  is  in  a  merchant's  office." 

"  It  is  a  long-  road  ;  for  he  is  only  a 
clerk." 

The  above  is  a  fair  specimen  of  the 
dialogue,  and  conveys  as  faint  an  idea 
of  it  as  specimens  generally  do. 

All  this  did  not:  prevent  Ephraira  and 
Sophia  from  spending  many  happy  hours 
together. 

But  presently  another  figure  came  on 
the  scene — Mr.  Jonathan  Clarke.  He 
took  a  fancy  to  Miss  Jackson,  and  told 
her  parents  so.  and  that  she  was  the  wife 
for  him,  if  sin-  was  disengaged.  They 
said,  "Well,  now,  their  was  a  young 
clerk  alter  her,  but  the  man  was  too 
poor  to  marry  her." 

Now  Mr.  Jonathan  Clarke  was  a 
wealthy  speculator;  so,  on  that  infor- 
mation, he  [ell  superior,  and  courted  her 
briskly. 

She  complained  to  Ephraim.  "The 
idea  of  their  encouraging  thai  fat  tool 
to  think  of  me!"  said  she.  She  called 
him  old,  though  he  was  but  thirty;  and 
turned  his  person  and  sentiments  into 
ridicule,  though,  in  the  opinion  of  sen- 
sible people,  he  was  a  comely  man,  full 
of  good  sense  and  sagacity. 

Mr.  Clarke  paid  her  compliments.  Miss 
Jackson  laughed,  and  reported  them  to 
Slade  in  a  way  to  make  him  laugh  too. 

Mr.  Clarke  asked  her  to  marry  him. 
She  said  no  ;  she  was  too  young  to  think 
of  that.  She  told  Ephraim  she  had  flatly 
refused  him. 

Mr.  Clarke  made  her  presents.  She 
refused  the  first,  and  blushed,  but  was 
prevailed  on  to  accept.  She  accepted  the 
second  and  the  third,  without  first  refus- 
ing them. 

She  did  not  trouble  Ephraim  Slade  with 
any  port  ion  of  t  his  detail.  She  was  afraid 
it  might  give  him  pain. 

Clarke  wooed  her  so  warmly  that  Eph- 
raim got  jealous  and  unhappy.  He  re- 
monstrated. Sophia  cried,  and  said  it 
was  all  her  parents'  fault — forcing  the 
man  upon  her. 

Clarke  was  there  every  day.     Ephraim 


scolded.  Sophia  was  cross.  They  parted 
in  anger.  Sophia  went  home  and  snubbed 
Clarke.  Clarke  laughed  and  said,  "Take 
your  time." 

He  stuck  there  four  hours.  She  came 
round,  and  was  very  civil. 

Matters  progressed.  Ephraim  always 
unhappy.  Clarke  always  jolly.  Parents 
in  the  same  mind. 

Clarke  urged  her  to  name  the  day. 

"Never  !  " 

Urged  her  again. 

••  Next  year." 

Urged  her  again  before  her  parents. 
They  put  in  their  word.  "Sophy,  don't 
trifle  any  longer.  You  are  overdoing 
it." 

"There,  there,  do  what  you  like  with 
me,"  said  the  girl  ;  "  I  am  miserable  !  " 
and  ran  out  crying. 

Clarke  and  parents  laughed,  and  stayed 
behind,  and  settled  the  day. 

When  Sophy  found  they  had  settled  the 
day,  she  sent  for  Ephraim  and  told  him, 
with  many  tears.  "Oh!"  said  she, 
"you  little  know  what  I  have  suffered 
this  six  monl  hs." 

"  My  poor  girl  !  "  said  Ephraim.  "Let 
us  elope  and  end  it ." 

■•  What  !  My  parents  would  curse 
me." 

••<  lh,  they  would  forgive  us  in  time." 

••  Never.     You  don't  know  them.     No, 

my  i r   Ephraim,  we  are  unfortunate. 

We  can  never  he  happy  together.  We 
must  bow.  I  should  die  if  this  went  on 
much  longer." 

"  You  arc  a  fickle,  faithless  jade,"  cried 
Ephraim,  in  agony. 

"  God  forgive  you,  dear  !  "  said  she,  and 
wept  silently. 

Then  he  tried  to  comfort  her.  Then  she 
put  her  arm  round  his  neck  and  assured 
him  she  yielded  to  constraint,  but  her 
heart  could  never  forget  him ;  she  was 
more  unhappy  than  he,  and  always 
should  he. 

They  parted,  with  many  tears  on  both 
sides,  and  she  married  Clarke.  At  her 
earnest  request  Slade  kept  away  from  the 
ceremony  ;  by  that  means  she  was  not 
compelled  to  wear  the  air  of  a  victim,  but 
could  fling  the  cloak  of  illusory  happiness 


REALITY. 


161 


and  gayety  over  her  aching  heart ;  and 
she  did  it,  too.  She  was  as  gay  a  bride 
as  had  been  seen  for  some  .years  in  those 
parts. 

Ephraim  Slade  was  very  unhappy. 
However,  after  a  bit,  he  comprehended 
the  character  of  Sophia  Clarke,  nee  Jack- 
son, and  even  imitated  her.  She  had 
gone  in  for  money,  and  so  aid  he  :  only 
on  the  square — a  detail  she  had  omitted. 
Years  went  on  :  he  became  a  partner  in 
the  house,  instead  of  a  clerk.  The  girls 
set  their  caps  at  him.  But  he  did  not 
marry.  Mrs.  Clarke  observed  this,  and 
secretly  approved.  Say  she  had  married, 
that  was  no  reason  why  he  should.  Jus- 
tice des  fe  in  mes .' 

Now  you  will  observe  that,  by  all  the 
laws  of  fiction,  Mrs.  Clarke  ought  to  have 
learned,  to  her  cost,  that  money  does  not 
bring  happiness,  and  ought  to  have  been 
miserable,  especially  whenever  she  en- 
countered the  pale  face  of  him  whose 
love  she  valued  too  late. 

Well,  she  broke  all  those  laws,  and 
went  in  for  Life  as  it  is.  She  was  hap- 
pier 1  han  most  wives.  Her  husband  was 
kind,  but  not  doting  ;  a  gentle  master, 
but  no  slave :  and  she  liked  it.  She  had 
two  beautiful  children,  and  they  helped 
fill  her  life.  Her  husband's  gold  smoothed 
her  path,  and  his  manly  affection  strewed 
it  with  flowers.  She  was  not  passionately 
devoted  to  him,  but  still,  by  the  very  laws 
of  nature,  the  wife  was  fonder  of  Jona- 
than than  the  maid  had  ever  been  of 
Ephraim  ;  not  but  what  the  latter  re- 
maining- unmarried  tickled  her  vanity. 
and  so  completed  her  content. 

She  passed  six  years  in  clover,  and  the 
clover  in  full  bloom  all  the  time.  Never- 
theless, gilt  happiness  is  apt  to  gel  a  rub 
sooner  or  later.  Clarke  had  losses  one 
upon  another,  and  at  last  told  her  he  was 
done  for.  He  must  go  back  to  California 
and  make  another  fortune.  "Lucky  the 
old  folks  made  me  settle  a  good  lump  on 
you,''  said  he.  "You  are  all  right,  and 
the  children." 

Away  went  stout-hearted  Clarke,  and 
left  his  wife  behind.  He  knew  the  coun- 
try, and  went  at  all  in  the  ring,  and  be- 
gan to  remake  money  fast. 

Reade — Vol.  IX. 


His  letters  were  not  very  frequent,  nor 
models  of  conjugal  love,  but  they  had 
g-ood  qualities  ;  one  was  their  contents — 
a  draft  on  New  York. 

Some  mischievous  person  reported  that 
he  was  often  seen  about  with  the  same 
lady  ;  but  Mrs.  Clarke  did  not  believe 
that,  the  remittances  being  regular. 

But  presently  both  letters  and  remit- 
tances ceased.  Then  she  believed  the 
worst,  and  sent  a  bitter  remonstrance 

She  received  no  reply. 

Then  she  wrote  a  bitterer  one,  and,  for 
the  first  time  since  their  union,  cast  Eph- 
raim Slade  in  his  teeth.  "There  he  is," 
said  she,  "unmarried  to  this  day,  for  my 
sake." 

No  reply  even  to  this. 

She  went  to  her  parents,  and  told  them 
how  she  was  used. 

They  said  they  had  foreseen  it — that  be- 
ing a  lie  some  people  think  it  necessary 
to  deliver  themselves  of  before  going  se- 
riously into  any  question — and  then,  after 
a  few  pros  and  cons,  they  bade  her  ob- 
serve that  her  old  lover,  Ephraim  Slade, 
was  a  rich  man,  a  man  unmarried,  evi- 
dently for  her  sake  ;  and  if  she  was  wise, 
she  would  look  that  way,  and  get  rid  of  a 
mock  husband,  who  was  probably  either 
dead  or  false,  and,  in  any  case,  had  de- 
serted her. 

"But  what  am  I  to  do?"  said  Mrs. 
Clarke,  affecting  not  to  know  what  they 
were  driving  at. 

"Why,  sue  for  a  divorce." 

"  Divorce  Jonathan  !  Think  of  it !  He 
is  the  father  of  my  children,  and  he  was  a 
good  husband  to  me  all  the  time  he  was 
with  me.  It  is  all  that  nasty  California." 
And  she  began  to  cry. 

The  old  people  told  her  she  must  take 
people  as  they  were,  not  as  they  had 
been;  and  it  was  no  fault  of  hers,  nor 
California's,  if  her  husband  was  a 
changed  man. 

In  short,  they  pressed  her  hard  to  sue 
for  a  divorce  and  let  Slade  know  she  was 
going  to  do  it. 

But  the  woman  was  still  handsome  and 
under  thirty,  and  was  not  without  a  cer- 
tain pride  and  delicacy  that  grace  her 
sex  even  when  they  lack  the  more  solid 

"6 


162 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


virtues.  "No,"  said  she,  "I  will  never 
go  begging  to  any  man.  I'll  not  let 
Ephraim  Slade  think  I  divorced  my  hus- 
band just  to  get  him.  I'll  part  with  Jon- 
athan, since  he  has  parted  with  me,  and 
after  that  I  will  take  my  chance.  Eph- 
raim Slade  ?  he  is  not  the  only  man  in  the 
world  with  eyes  in  his  head." 

So  she  sued  for  a  divorce,  ami  gol  il 
quite  easy.  Divorce  is  beautifully  easy 
in  the  West. 

When  she  was  free,  she  had  no  Longer 
any  scruple  about  Ephraim.  He  lived  at 
a  town  seven  miles  from  her.  She  had  a 
friend  in  that  town.  She  paid  heravisit. 
She  Let  the  other  Lady  into  her  plans. 
and     secured     her    co-operation.      Mrs. 

X set  it  abroad  that  Mrs. Clarke  was 

a  widow  ;  and,  from  one  to  another. 
Ephraim  Slade  was  given  to  undcrsl  nd 
that  a  visit  from  him  would  i"~  agree- 
able. 

••  Will  it  ?"  said  Ephraim.  "Then  I'll 
go." 

lie  called  on  her,  and  was  received 
with  a  •  ness.      ••  Sit 

down.  Ephraim— Mr.  Slade."  said  she. 
softly  and  tremulously,  and  lefl  tie 
room.  She  had  scarcely  cleared  it,  when 
he  heard  her  tell  the  female  servant .  with 
a  sharp,  imperious  tone,  to  admit  no  other 

visitors.      It    did  not   seem  the  same  voice. 
ne  back   to    him  melodious.      "  The 

sight  of  you  after  so  many  years  upsel 
me,"  said  She.  Then,  after  a  pause  and 
a  sigh,  "  You  look  well." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  am  all  right.  We  are 
neither  of  us  quite  so  young  as  we  were. 
you  know." 

••No.  indeed"  (with  another  sigh). 
"Well,  dear  friend,  I  suppose  you  have 
heard.  I  am  punished,  you  see.  for  my 
want  of  courage  and  fidelity.  I  have 
always  been  punished.  But  you  could 
not  know  that.  Perhaps,  after  all,  you 
have  been  the  happier  of  the  two.  I  am 
sure  I  hope  you  have." 

••  Well.  I'll  tell  you.  Mrs.  Clarke." 
said  he.  in  open,  manly  tones. 

She  stopped  him.  "Please  don't  call 
me  Mrs.  Clarke,  when  I  have  parted  with 
the  name  forever."  (Sotte  voce.)  ••Call 
me  Sophia." 


"  Well,  then,  Sophia,  I'll  tell  you  the 
truth.     When  you  jilted  me — " 

"Oh!" 

"And  married  CI — who  shall  I  say? 
Well,  then,  married  another,  because  he 
had  got  more  money  than  I  had — " 

"No.  no.  Ephraim,  it  was  all  my 
parents.  Bu1  1  will  try  and  hear  your 
reproaches.     Go  on." 

"Well,  then,  of  course  I  was  awfully 
cut  up.  I  was  wild.  1  gol  a  six-shooter 
to  kill  you  and — the  other." 

"  I  wish  you  had."  said  she.  She  didn't 
wish  anything  of  the  kind. 

'•  I'm  very  glad  1  didn't.,  then.  I  drop 
ped  the  six-shooter  and  took  to  the  mop- 
ing and  crying'  line." 

"  Poor  Ephraim  !  " 

"Oh,  yes;  1  went  through  all  the 
changes,  and  ended  as  other  men  do." 

••  And  how   is  thai  ?  " 

••  Why,  by  getting  over  it." 

••  What  !  yon  have  got  over  i1  ?  " 

•■  Lord,  yes  :   long  ago." 

"Oh!  -in — deed!"  said  she,  bitterly. 
Then,  with  sl\  incredulity,  •'How  is  it 
you  have  never  married  ?  " 

•Well.  I'll  tell  you.  When  I  found 
that  money  was  everything  with  you 
girls.  I  calculated  to  go  in  lor  nmiiex 
too  So  I  speculated,  like — the  other, 
and  made  money.  But  when  1  had  once 
begun  to  taste  money-making,  somehow 
1  left  oiT  troubling  about  women.  And, 
besides,  I  know  a  greal  many  people,  and 
I  look  coolly  on.  and  what.  I  see  in  every 
e  has  set  me  againSl  marriage.  Most 
of  my  married  friends  envy  me.  and  say 
I  don't  envy  any  one  of  them,  and 
don't  pretend  to.  Marriage!  it  is  a 
bad  institution.  You  have  got  clear  of 
it,  I  hear.  Ail  the  better  for  you.  1 
mean  to  take  a  shorter  road  :  I  won't 
ever  get  into  it." 

This  churl,  then,  who  had  drowned  hot 
passion  in  the  waves  of  time,  and,  instead 
of  nursing  a  passion  for  her  all  his  days, 
had  been  hugging  celibacy  as  man's 
choicest  treasure,  asked  her  coolly  if 
there  was  anything  he  could  do  for  her. 
Could  he  be  of  service  in  finding  out  in- 
vest ments,  etc.,  or  could  he  place  either 
of  the  bovs  in  the  road  to  wealth?     In- 


REALITY. 


163 


stead  of  hating-  these  poor  children,  like 
a  man,  he  seemed  all  the  more  inclined  to 
serve  them  that  their  absent  parent  had 
secured  him  the  sweets  of  celibacy. 

She  was  bursting-  with  ire,  but  had  the 
self-restraint  to  thank  him,  though  very 
coldly,  and  to  postpone  all  discussion  of 
that  kind  to  a  future  time.  Then  he 
shook  hands  with  her  and  left  her. 

She  was  wounded  to  the  core.  It  would 
have  been  very  hard  to  wound  her  heart 
as  deeply  as  this  interview  wounded  her 
pride. 

She  sat  down  and  shed  tears  of  mortifi- 
cation. 

She  was  aroused  from  that  condition 
by  a  letter  in  a  well-known  hand.  She 
opened  it,  all  in  a  flutter  : 

"  My  dear  Sophy — You  are  a  nice  wife, 
3Tou  are.  Here  I  have  been  slaving  my 
life  out  for  you,  and  shipwrecked,  and 
nearly  dead  with  a  fever,  and  coming 
home  rich  again,  and  I  asked  you  just  to 
come  from  Chicago  to  New  York  to  meet 
me,  that  have  come  all  the  way  from 
China  and  San  Francisco,  and  it  is  too 
much  trouble.  Did  you  ever  hear  of 
Lunbam's  dog  that  was  so  lazy  he  leaned 
against  the  wall  to  bark  ?  It  is  very  dis- 
heartening to  a  poor  fellow  that  has 
played  a  man's  part  for  you  and  the  chil- 
dren. Now  be  a  good  girl,  and  meet  me 
at  Chicago  to-morrow  evening-  at  6  P.M. 
For  if  you  don't,  by  thunder  !  I'll  take  the 
children  and  absquatulate  with  them  to 
Paris,  or  somewhere.  I  find  the  drafts 
on  New  York  I  sent  from  China  have 
never  been  presented.  Reckon  by  that 
you  never  got  them.  Has  that  raised 
your  dander  ?  Well,  it  is  not  my  fault ; 
so  put  on\rour  bonnet  and  come  and  meet 
"Your  affectionate  husband. 
"Jonathan  Clarke. 

"I  sent  my  first  letter  to  your  father's 
house.  I  send  this  to  vour  friend  Mrs. 
X—" 

Mrs.  Clarke  read  this  in  such  a  tumult 
of  emotions  that  her  mind  could  not  settle 
a  moment  on  one  thing.  But  when  she 
had  read  it,  the  blood  in  her  beating  veins 
bes-an  to  run  cold. 


What  on  earth  should  she  do  ?  Fall  to 
the  ground  between  two  stools  ?  No  : 
that  was  a  man's  trick,  and  she  was  a 
woman,  every  inch. 

She  had  not  any  time  to  lose  ;  so  she 
came  to  a  rapid  conclusion.  Her  acts 
will  explain  better  than  comments.  She 
dressed,  packed  up  one  box,  drove  to  the 
branch  station,  and  got  to  Chicag-o.  She 
bought  an  exquisite  bonnet,  took  private 
apartments  at  a  hotel,  and  employed  an 
intelligent  person  to  wait  for  her  husband 
at  the  station,  and  call  out  his  name,  and 
give  him  a  card,  on  which  was  written 

•■  Mrs.  Jonathan  Clarke. 

At  the  X Hotel." 

This  done,  she  gave  her  mind  entirely 
to  the  decoration  of  her  person. 

The  ancients,  when  they  had  done  an3'- 
thing  wrong  and  wanted  to  be  forgiven, 
used  to  approach  their  judges  with  di- 
sheveled hair,  and  shabby  clothes.  Sor- 
didis  vestibus. 

This  poor  shallow  woman,  unenlight- 
ened by  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients, 
thought  the  nicer  a  woman  looked,  the 
likelier  a  man  would  be  to  forgive  her,  no 
matter  what.  So  she  put  on  her  best  silk 
dress,  and  her  new  French  hat  bought  on 
purpose,  and  made  her  hair  very  neat, 
and  gave  her  face  a  wash  and  a  rub,  that 
added  color.  She  did  not  rouge,  because 
she  calculated  she  should  have  to  cry  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  play,  and  crying  hard 
over  rouge  makes  channels. 

When  she  was  as  nice  as  could  be,  she 
sat  down  to  wait  for  her  divorce  ;  she 
might  be  compared  to  a  fair  spider  which 
has  spread  her  web  to  catch  a  wasp,  but 
is  sorely  afraid  that,  when  he  does  come, 
he  will  dash  it  all  to  ribbons. 

The  time  came  and  passed.  An  ex- 
pected character  is  always  as  slow  to 
come  as  a  watched  pot  to  boil. 

At  last  there  was  a  murmur  on  the 
stairs;  then  a  loud  hearty  voice;  then  a 
blow  at  the  door — you  could  not  call  it  a 
tap — and  in  burst  Jonathan  Clarke,  brown 
as  a  berry,  beard  a  foot  long,  genial  and 
loud,  open-heart,  Californian  manners. 

At  sight  of  her  he  gave  a  hearty  "Ah  !  " 
and  came  at  her  with  a  rush  to  clasp  her 


164 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READJL. 


to  his  manly  bosom,  and  knocked  over  a 
little  cane  chair  gilt. 

The  lady,  quaking  internally,  and  trem- 
bling from  head  to  foot,  received  him  like 
the  awful  Sid  dons,  with  one  hand  nobly 
extended,  forbidding-  his  profane  advance. 
"  A  word  first,  if  you  please,  sir." 

Then  Clarke  stood  transfixed,  with  one 
foot  advanced,  and  his  arm  in  the  air.  like 
Ixion,  when  Juno  turned  cloud. 

"You  have  ordered  me  to  come  here, 
sir,  and  you  have  no  longer  any  righl    to 

<,i-t]r\'  :    hut    L  am  come,  you  see,  to  tell 

you  my  mind.  What,  do  you  really  think  a 
wife  is  to  be  deserted  and  abandoned,  mosl 
likely  for  some  other  woman,  ami  t  hen  lie 
whistled  back  into  her  place  like  a  dog? 
No  man  shall  use  me  so." 

'•  Why.  what  is  I  lie  row?  has  a  mad 
dog   bitten    you,    ye    cantankerous    crit- 

•■  Nol    a    letter    for    ten    months,  t  hat    IS 

the  matter!"'  cried  Mrs.  Clarke,  loud 
and  aggressive. 

■•  That  is  not  my  fault .     1   \\  ro1 
from  I  'hina.  and  sent  rafts  on 

New  York." 

••  li    is  easy  t  .1  say        :  I  do 
it."     (Louder  and  age. 

Clarke   (bawling   in   his  turn).      "  I 
don'1  care  whel  her  3  ou  believe  it   1 
Nobody  but  you  calls  Jonj  Clarke  a  liar." 

Mrs.  Clarke  (competing  in  violence). 
■■  1  believe  one  t  hing,  1  ha:  ;  ou  w  ere  seen 
all  about  San  Francisco  with  a  lady. 
'Twas  to  her  you  directed  mj  letters  and 
drafts:  thai  is  how  1  lost  them.  It  is  al- 
ways the  husband  that  is  in  fault,  and 
not  the  post."  (Very  amicably  all  of  a 
sudden:)  "How  long  were  you  11,  Cali- 
fornia after  you  came  back  from  China  ?  " 

■■  Two  months." 

"How  often  did  you  write  111  that 
time?"      (Sharply.) 

••  Well,  you  see.  I  was  always  expect- 
ing to  start  for  home." 

"You  never  wrote  once."  (Very 
loud.) 

"That  was  the  reason." 

"That  and  the  lady."  (Screaming 
loud  ) 

"Stuff!  Give  me  a  kiss,  and  no  more 
nonsense.' 


(Solemnly:)  "That  I  shall  never  do 
again.  Husbands  must  be  taught  not  to 
trifle  with  their  wives'  affections  in  this 
cruel  wax."  (Tenderly:)  "Oh,  Jona- 
than, how  could  you  abandon  me  ?  What 
could  you  expect?  I  am  not  old;  lam 
not  ugly." 

"D — n  it  all,  if  you  have  been  playing 
any  games  " — and  he  felt  instinctively  for 
a  bowie-knife. 

"Sir!"  said  the  lady,  in  an  awful 
tone,  that  subjugated  the  monster  di- 
rect ly. 

••  Well,  then,"  said  he,  sullenly,  "  don'1 
talk  nonsense.  Please  remember  we  are 
man  and  wife." 

Mrs.  Clarke  (very  gravely).  "Jon- 
athan, we  are  not ." 

••  I  damnation  !  what  do  3  mi  mean  ?  " 

"If  you  are  going  into  a  passion,  1 
won't  tell  you  anything:  I  hate  to  be 
frightened.    What  language  the  man  has 

picked  up — in  California  !  " 

"Well,  that's  neither  here  nor  there. 
You  go  on." 

"Well.  Jonathan,  you  know  1  have  al- 
ways been  under  the  influence  of  my 
It  was  at  their  wish  I  married 
you." 

'•  That  is  not  what  you  told   me  at   the 

••  1  Hi.  >•  s,  1  did  ;  only  you  have  forgot- 
ten. Wei  ,  when  no  word  came  from  you 
for  so  many  months,  my  parents  were  in- 
dignant, and  they  worked  upon  me  so  and 
pestered  me  so — that — Jonathan,  we  are 
ced." 

ctress  thoughl    this  was  a  good 
point  to  cry  at.  and  cried  accordingly. 

Jonathan  started  at  the  announcement, 
swore  a  heartful,  and  then  walked  the 
room  in  rage  and  bitterness.  "  So.  t  ben," 
said  he.  "you  leave  the  woman  you  love, 
and  the  children  whose  smiles  are  your 
heaven;  you  lead  the  life  of  a  dog  for 
them,  and  when  you  come  back,  by  God, 
the  wife  of  your  bosom  has  divorced  you, 
just  because  a  letter  or  two  miscarried  ! 
That  outweighs  all  you  have  done  and 
suffered  for  her.  Oh.  you  are  crying,  are 
you  ?  What,  you  have  given  up  facing 
it  out .  and  laying  the  blame  on  me,  have 
vou  ?  " 


REALITY. 


165 


"Yes,  dear;  I  find  you  were  not  to 
blame  :  it  was — my  parents." 

"  Your  parents  !  Why,  you  are  not  a 
child,  are  you  ?  You  are  the  parent  of 
my  children,  you  little  idiot  :  have  you 
forgotten  that?  " 

"No.  Oh  !  oh !  oh  !  I  have  acted 
hastily,  and  very,  very  wrong." 

"Come,  that  is  a  good  deal  for  a  pretty 
woman  to  own.  There,  dry  your  eyes, 
and  let  us  order  dinner.*' 

"  What !  dine  with  you  ?  " 

"  Why,  d — n  it,  it  is  not  the  first  time 
by  a  few  thousand." 

"  La,  Jonathan,  I  should  like  ;  but  I 
mustn't." 

"Why  not?" 

"I  should  be  compromised." 

"What,  with  me?" 

"Yes;  with  any  gentleman.  Do  try 
and  realize  the  situation,  dear.  I  am  a 
single  woman.'" 

Good  Mr.  Clarke — from  California— de- 
livered a  string  of  curses  so  rapidly  that 
they  all  ran  into  what  Sir  Walter  calls  a 
"  clishmaclaver,"  even  as  when  the  ring- 
ers clash  and  jangle  the  church  bells. 

Mrs.  Clarke  gave  him  time;  but  as 
soon  as  he  was  in  a  state  to  listen  quietly, 
compelled  him  to  realize  her  situation. 
"  You  see,"  said  she,  "I  am  obliged  to 
be  very  particular  now.  Delicacy  de- 
mands it.  You  remember  poor  Ephraim 
Slade?" 

"  Your  old  sweetheart.  Confound  him  ! 
has  he  been  after  you  again  ?  " 

"Why,  Jonathan,  ask  yourself.  He 
has  remained  unmarried  ever  since  ;  and 
when  he  heard  I  was  free,  of  course  he 
entertained  hopes ;  but  I  kept  him  at  a 
distance;  and  so"  (tenderly  and  regret- 
fully) "  I  must  you.  I  am  a  single 
woman." 

"Look  me  in  the  face,  Sophy.  You 
won't  dine  with  me?" 

"  I'd  give  the  world ;  but  I  mustn't, 
dear." 

"  Not  if  I  twist  your  neck  round — dar- 
ling—if  you  don't?" 

"No.  dear.  You  shall  kill  me,  if  you 
please.  But  I  am  a  respectable  woman, 
and  I  will  not  brave  the  world.  But  I 
know    I    have    acted     rashly,   foolishly, 


ungratefully,  and  deserve  to  be  killed. 
Kill  me,  dear — you'll  forgive  me  then." 
With  that,  she  knelt  down  at  his  feet, 
crossed  her  hands  over  his  knees,  and 
looked  up  sweetly  in  his  face  with  brim- 
ming eyes,  waiting,  yea,  even  requesting, 
to  be  killed. 

He  looked  at  her  with  glistening  eyes. 
"You  cunning  hussy,"  said  he;  "you 
know  I  would  not  hurt  a  hair  of  your 
head.  What  is  to  be  done?  I  tell  you 
what  it  is,  Sophy ;  I  have  lived  three 
years  without  a  wife,  and  that  is  enough. 
I  won't  live  any  longer  so — no,  not  a 
day.  It  shall  be  you,  or  somebody  else. 
Ah  !  what  is  that  ? — a  bell.  I'll  ring, 
and  order  one.  I've  got  lots  of  money. 
They  are  always  to  be  had  for  that,  you 
know." 

"  Oh,  Jonathan !  don't  talk  so.  It  is 
scandalous.  How  can  you  get  a  wife  all 
in  a  minute — by  ringing  ?  " 

"  If  I  can't,  then  the  town-crier  can. 
I'll  hire  him." 

"  For  shame." 

' '  How  is  it  to  be,  then  ?  You  that  are 
so  smart  at  dividing  couples,  you  don't 
seem  to  be  very  clever  in  bringing  'em  to- 
gether again." 

'•  It  was  my  parents,  Jonathan,  not 
me.  Well,  dear.  I  always  think  when 
people  are  in  a  difficulty,  the  best  thing 
is  to  go  to  some  very  good  person  for 
advice.  Now.  the  best  people  are  the 
clergymen.  There  is  one  in  this  street, 
No.   18.      Perhaps  he  could  advise  us." 

Jonathan  listened  gravely  for  a  little 
while,  before  he  saw  what  she  was  at ; 
but  the  moment  he  caught  the  idea  so 
slyly  conveyed,  he  slapped  his  thigh  and 
shouted  out,  "You  are  a  sensible  girl. 
Come  on."  And  he  almost  dragged  her 
to  the  clergyman.  Not  but  what  he 
found  time  to  order  a  good  dinner  in 
the  hall  as  they  went. 

The  clergyman  was  out,  but  soon 
found :  he  remarried  them :  and  they 
dined  together  man  and  wife. 

They  never  mentioned  grievances  that- 
night  ;  and  Jonathan  said,  afterward, 
his  second  bridal  was  worth  a  dozen  of 
his  first ;  for  the  first  time  she  was  a 
child,  and  had  to  be  courted  up-hill :  but 


166 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE 


the  second  time  she  was  a  woman,  and 
knew  what  to  say  to  a  fellow. 

Next   day   Mr.   and    Mrs.  Clarke  went 

over    to .      They  drove    about    in    an 

open   carriage   for   some  hours,  and  did 
a   heap  of   shopping-.      They   passed   by 


Epliraim  Slade's  place  of  business  much 
oftener  than  there  was  any  need,  and 
slower.  It  was  Mrs.  Clarke  who  drove. 
Jonathan  sat  and  took  it  easy. 

She  drives  to  this  day. 

And  Jonathan  takes  it  easy. 


EXCHANGE   OF  ANIMALS. 


Old  traditions  linger  in  country 
long  after   they  have   perished  in  great 

Nik  lis.       Were     t  lie    English    pro\  i 

be  groped  for  modem  antiquities,  and 
the  sum  total  presented,  the  general 
reader  would  be  amazed  a1  the  mass  of 
ancient  superstition  lingering 
England.  Not  only  do  popish  pra 
popish  legends  and  charms,  flourish  in 
our  most    Puritanical  c  iut  even 

pagan  rites  and  cerei ies.    In  the  north 

the  mummers  at  Christmas,  of  all  days. 
dance  a  sword-dance  which  belo 
the  worship  of  a  Scandinavian  ;rod  ;  in 
Northumberland  and  parts  of  Ireland. 
the  young  folks  still  make  Little  bonfires 
and  leap  through  thorn  on  a  ■ 
day,  though  the  practice  is  forbidden  in 
the  Old  Testament  as  an  abomination, 
for  this  is  no  other  thing  than  "  going 
through  the  Bre  to  Baal."  and  is 
the  many  signs  that  we  Colts  were  an 
Oriental  tribe.  Any  novice  wishing  to 
strike  this  vein  of  lore  without  much 
trouble  has  only  to  read  the  excellent 
book  of  Mr.  Henderson,  and  grope  the  in- 
dex to  Notes  and  Queries.  I  strongly 
recommend  the  latter  course. 

"For  index-reading  turns  no  student  pale. 
Yet  takes  the  eel  of  science  by  the  tail." 

My  own  reading  in  such  matters  has 
taught  me  one  thing — to  suspect  old  tra- 
dition whenever  I  encounte:  any  strange 
practice  down  in  the  country.  Why,  even 
rustic  mispronunciation  is  often  a  relic, 
where  it  passes  for  an  error.     Rusticus 


calls    a     coroner's    inquest    "crowner's 

and  the  educated  smile  superior. 

But  Rusticus  is  not  wrong  :    he  is  only  in 

arrear.     "  Crowner's  quest  "  is  the  true 

medieval    form,  and  was  once  universal. 

Every  English  peasant  calls  a  theater  a 

n  sneer.  Yet 

theater    is    the   true   pronunciation:     and 

fifty   years   in  fore   Shakespeare  nobody, 

low,  mispronounced  the  word  into 

r.  as  he  does  and  we  do. 

To  the  tenacity  of  old  tradition  I  ascribe 
a  prevalent  notion,  in  rude  parts  of  this 
country,  that  an  Englishman  and  his  wife 
can  divorce  themselves  under  certain  con- 
ditions. 1st.  the  parties  must  consent; 
2d,  there  must  he  a  public  auction  ;  3d,  the 
lady  must  lie  sold  with  a  halter  round  her 
neck.  That  our  rural  population  ever  in- 
vented this  law  is  improbable  in  itself  ami 
againsl  evidence:  there  are  exan 
the  practice  as  old  ;is  any  chronicle  we 
have  :  and  I  really  suspect  that  in  some 
barbarous  age — later,  perhaps,  than  our 
serious  worship  of  Baal,  but  anterior  to 
our  earliest  Saxon  laws — this  rude  divorce 
by  consent  was  the  unwritten  law  of 
Britain. 

The  thing  has  been  done  in  my  day 
many  times,  and  related  in  the  journals., 
and  I  observe  that  it  is  always  done  with 
similar  ceremonies,  and  that  the  lower 
order  of  people,  though  they  jeer,  are  not 
shocked  at  it,  nor  does  it  seem  to  strike 
them  as  utterly  and  profoundly  illegal. 
It  dates,  I  apprehend,  from  a  time  when 
marriage  was  a  partnership  at  will,   and 


EXCHANGE    OF   ANIMALS. 


1G7 


the  Roman  theory  that  marriage  is  a 
sacrament,  and  the  English  theory  that 
marriage  is  not  a  sacrament,  but  half  a 
sacrament,  were  alike  unknown  to  a 
primitive  people. 

My  note-book  contains  numerous  ex- 
amples. I  select  one  with  a  bit  of  color, 
which  was  published  at  the  date  when  it 
occurred. 

Joseph  Thompson  rented  a  farm  of 
forty  acres  in  a  village  three  miles  from 
Carlisle.  In  1829  he  married  a  spruce, 
lively  girl  twenty-two  years  of  age. 

They  had  many  disputes,  and  no  chil- 
dren. So  after  three  years  they  agreed 
to  part. 

The  bell-man  was  sent  round  the  vil- 
lage to  announce  that  Joseph  Thompson 
would  sell  Mary  Anne  Thompson  by  auc- 
tion on  April  5,  1832,  at  noon  precisely. 

At  the  appointed  hour  Joseph  Thomp- 
son stood  on  a  table,  and  his  wife  a  little 
below  him  on  an  oak  chair,  with  a  halter 
of  straw  i*ound  her  neck.  He  put  her  up 
for  sale  in  terms  that  a  by-stander  thought 
it  worth  while  to  take  down  on  the  spot. 

'•Gentlemen,  I  have  to  offer  to  your 
notice  my  wile,  Mary  Anne  Thompson, 
otherwise  Williamson.  It  is  her  wish  as 
well  as  mine  to  part  forever,  and  will  be 
sold  without  reserve  to  the  highest  bid- 
der. Gentlemen,  the  lot  now  offered  for 
competition  has  been  to  me  a  bosom  ser- 
pent. I  took  it  for  my  comfort  and  the 
good  of  my  house  :  but  it  became  my  tor- 
mentor, a  domestic  curse,  a  night  inva- 
sion, and  a  daily  devil.  The  Lord  deliver 
us  from  termagant  wives  and  trouble- 
some widows  !  Gentlemen,  avoid  them 
as  you  would  a  mad  dog,  a  roaring  lion, 
a  loaded  pistol,  cholera  morbus,  or  any 
other  pestilential  phenomenon — " 

Here  it  seems  to  have  occurred  to 
Joseph  Thompson  that  he  was  not  going 
the  way  to  sell  his  lot  at  a  high  figure ; 
so  he  tried  to  be  more  the  auctioneer  and 
less  the  husband. 

"  However,'"  said  he,  "now  I  have  told 
you  her  little  defects,  I  will  present  the 
bright  and  sunny  side  of  her.  She  can 
read  novels,  milk  cows,  and  laugh  and 
weep  with  the  same  ease  that  you  could 


toss  off  a  glass  of  ale.  What  the  poet 
says  of  women  in  general  is  true  to  a  hair 
of  this  one — 

•Heaven  gave  to  women  the  peculiar  grace 
To  laugh,  to  weep,  and  cheat   the  human  race.' 

She  can  make  butter  and  scold  the  maid  ; 
she  can  sing  Moore's  Melodies,  and  plait 
her  own  frills  and  caps.  She  cannot 
make  rum.  nor  gin.  nor  whisky  :  but  she 
is  a  good  judge  of  all  three  from  long  ex- 
perience in  tasting  them.  What  shall 
we  say  for  her,  with  all  her  perfections 
and  imperfections  ?  —  fifty  shillings  to 
begin  ?  " 

There  was  a  dead  silence.  He  had  bet- 
ter have  employed  George  Robins,  Senior. 
"  Cuilibet  in  sua,  arte  credendum."  There 
was  no  bidding  at  all.  Then  the  auc- 
tioneer wras  angry,  and  threatened  to 
take  the  lot  home. 

The  company  in  general  sustained  this 
threat  with  composure  ;  but  one  Mears 
conceived  hopes,  and  asked  modestly 
whether  an  exchange  could  not  be  made. 
"I  have  here,"  said  he.  "a  Newfound- 
land dog — a  beauty.  He  can  fetch  and 
carry  ;  and  if  you  fall  in  the  water,  drunk 
or  sober,  he'll  pull  you  out." 

Thompson  approved  the  dog,  but  ob- 
jected to  give  a  Christian  in  even  ex- 
change for  a  quadruped.  Each  species 
has  a  prejudice  in  its  own  favor,  owing 
to  which  the  company  backed  him.  So 
at  last  Mears  agreed  to  give  the  dog  and 
twenty  shillings  to  boot. 

The  bargain  was  made.  Thompson 
took  the  halter  off  the  wife  and  put  it 
round  the  dog.  and  Mears  led  his  pur- 
chase away  by  the  hand,  amid  the 
shouts  and  huzzas  of  the  multitude,  in 
which  they  were  joined  by  Thompson. 

After  a  while,  however,  the  latter  recol- 
lected he  had  a  duty  to  perform.  ';  I 
must  drink  the  new-married  couple's 
health,"'  said  he,  gravely.  Accordingly 
he  adjourned  with  his  dog  and  his  money 
to  the  public-house,  and  toasted  his  de- 
liverer so  zealously  that  he  took  nothing 
home  from  the  sale  except  the  dog.  For- 
tunately for  him.  a  man  can't  drink  his 
superior. 


168 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


THE   TWO    LEARS. 


Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  tells  the  old 
British  legend  of  King-  Leir.  Hollings- 
head  repeats  it,  and  from  him  Shakes- 
peare took  it.  and  made  the  dry  bones 
live.  In  that  great  master's  hands  the 
tale  broadened  and  deepened.  It  became 
more  tragical  than  the  original  record. 

This  is  the  outline  of  Shakespeare's 
story  : 

King  Lear,  being  old,  and  disposed  to 
enjoy  ease  and  dignity  withoul  the  cares 
of  state,  resolved  1"  divide  his  kingdom 
among  his  three  daughters  :  their  names 
were  Groneril,  Duchess  of  Albany.  Etegan, 
Duchess  of  Cornwall,  and  Cordelia,  un- 
married, but  courted  by  the  king  of 
France  and  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  then 
a  powerful  monarch,  though  nominally 
vassal  to  t  he  French  king. 

When  it  came  to  the  division,  the  old 
kins'  was  weak  enough  to  tell  his 
daughters  he  should  give  the  larger  share 
to  the  one  who  loved  him  best,  and  should 
prove  her  love  by  words. 

This  was  to  invite  cheap  protesta- 
tions, and  accordingly,  two  of  the  ladies, 
Goneril  and  Regan,  vied  in  lip-love: 
Goneril  said  she  loved  him  more  than 
words  could  utter,  yet  she  found  words  to 
pain;  filial  love  in  tolerably  glowing 
terms  :  for  she  went  so  far  as  to  say  that 
she  loved  him  dearer  than  eyesight, 
space,  or  liberty,  and  no  less  than  honor, 
beauty,  health,  and  life  itself:  with  more 
to  the  same  tune. 

Regan  could  not  soar  above  this  :  so 
she  had  the  address  to  say  that  her  sister 
had  spoken  her  very  mind,  only  she. 
Regan,  went  a  little  further,  and  detested 
all  other  joys  iuit  that  of  filial  love. 

The  royal  parent  believed  all  this,  and 
then  turned  to  his  favorite,  his  youngest, 
and  asked  her  what  she  could  say  to  draw 
from  him  a  larger  dowry  than  her  sisters 
had  just  earned — with  their  tongues. 


Cordelia.  Nothing,  my  lord. 
Lear.  Nothing. 
Cord.  Nothing. 

Lear.   Nothing   can   come   of   nothing: 
again. 


Cordelia  was  a  little  frightened  of  her 
father's  anger;  but  she  would  onl\  say 
that  she  Loved  her  father  as  a  daughter 
should  :  she  obeyed  him,  loved  him. 
honored  him,  aim  t  bought  it  no  merit , 
but  a  thing  of  course.  She  also  declined 
frankly  to  believe  that  her  sisters,  who 
were  wives,  had  no  love  for  their  hus- 
bands, only  for  their  father;  nor  could 
she  promise  to  reserve  all  her  love  for  her 
father,  and  give  none  to  the  man  she 
mighl  \\cd. 

The  fact  is.  she  being  a  woman,  her 
sisters  were  such  transparent  humbugs  to 
her  thai  it  made  her  rather  blunt  in  her 
honesty,  and  she  did  not  gild  the  pill. 

Lear.  So  young,  and  so  untender? 
So  young,  my  lord,  ami  true. 
i  o;    thj    truth   then    be   thy 

dower. 

lie  then  went  into  a  violent  passion, 
and  disowned  her  as  his  daughter,  and 
ordered  her  from  his  presence,  while  la- 
settled  with  his  favorite  daughters  what 
retinue  he  was  to  have  as  a  retired  king-, 
and  where  he  was  to  li 

Afterward  he  sent  for  Cordelia  and  the 
princes  her  suitors ;  he  told  them  to  her 
face  he  had  disinherited  her,  and  he  used 
terms  of  invective,  so  ambiguous  that 
Cordelia,  who  had  borne  all  the  rest  in 
silence,  now  interfered,  and  appealed  to 
his  justice  to  tell  those  gentlemen  she  had 
lost  his  favor  not  by  any  unchaste  or  dis- 
honorable act,  but  for  want  of  a  greedy 
eye  and  a  flattering  tongue. 

Lear  evaded  this  remonstrance,  and  up- 
braided her  again  in  general  terms;  but 
Cordelia's  appeal  was   not  lost  upon  her 


THE    TWO    LEARS. 


169 


suitors.  Burgundy,  indeed,  only  offered 
to  take  her  with  the  dowry  originally 
proposed,  and  on  the  king  refusing  this, 
he  declined  her  hand.  But  thereupon 
this  pitiable  scene  was  redeemed  by  a 
trait  of  nobility:  France,  who  had  come 
there  for  a  rich  dowry  as  well  as  a  bride, 
was  now  fired  with  nobler  sentiments, 
and  welcomed  a  pearl  of  Womanhood, 
without  land  or  money. 

Fairest  Cordelia,  thou  art  most  rich,  being  poor  ; 
More  choice,  forsaken  ;  and  most  loved,  despised  ! 
Thy  dowerless     daughter,    king,   thrown    to   my 

chance. 
Is  queen  of  us,  of  ours,  and  our  fair  France  : 
Not  all  the  dukes  of  wat'rish  Burgundy 
Shall  buy  this  unprized,  precious  maid  of  me. 

Even  this  noble  burst  did  not  enlighten 
or  soften  the  impetuous  old  king,  whose 
vanity  had  been  publicly  wounded.  He 
actually  took  the  arm  of  Burgundy,  the 
paltry  duke  who  had  admitted  lie  wooed 
the  lady  only  for  her  substance,  and  he 
bade  the  only  daughter  who  really  loved 
him  begone. 

Without  his  love,  his  grace,  his  benison. 

France  was  as  glad  to  have  her  as  he 
to  part  with  her,  and  so  she  disappeared 
for  a  time  from  the  scene. 

Now  the  terms  of  Lear*s  retirement, 
which  I  alluded  to  above,  were  these  :  he 
was  to  retain  the  title  of  a  king,  and  a 
retinue  of  a  hundred  knights,  to  be  kept 
at  the  expense  of  his  regal  daughters, 
and  he  and  that  retinue  were  to  reside  a 
month  at  a  time  with  each  princess  in 
turn. 

He  began  his  new  life  in  the  palace  of 
his  daughter  Goneril. 

He  and  his  knights  soon  became  burden- 
some to  that  lady,  and  she  made  the  most 
of  every  little  offense.  She  resolved  to 
shift  him  on  to  her  sister,  and  gave  in- 
sidious  instructions   to   her  major-domo. 

Put  on  what  weary  negligence  you  please, 
You  and  your  fellows  :  I'd  have  it  come  to  ques- 
tion : 
If  be  dislike  it,  let  him  to  my  sister. 
Whose  mind  and  mine.  I  know,  in  that  are  one, 
Not  to  be  overruled.     Idle  old  man, 
That  still  would  manage  those  authorities 
That  he  hath  given  away. 


These  prefidious  instructions  bore  fruit 
immediately.  Goneril's  head  servant  was 
insolent  to  Lear  ;  the  impetuous  king 
beat  him,  and  was  soon  after  confronted 
by  his  daughter,  who,  to  his  amazement, 
took  him  to  task  in  cold  and  lofty  terms 
for  his  disorderly  conduct  and  that  of  his 
tram.  With  regard  to  the  latter,  she 
told  him  plainly  he  must  discharge  one- 
half  of  them,  or  she  should  do  it  for  him. 

This  cool  insolence,  coming  so  soon 
after  the  violent  protestations,  put  Lear 
in  a  fury. 

Darkness  and  devils  ! — 
Saddle  my  horses  ;  call  my  train  together. 
Degenerate  bastard  !  I'll  not  trouble  thee — 
Yet  have  I  left  a  daughter. 

Goneril.     You  strike  my  people,  and  your  dis- 
ordered rabble 
Make  servants  of  their  betters. 

These  two  speeches  alone  may  serve  to 
show  which  was  likely  to  prevail  in  this 
unnatural  combat,  the  hot-headed,  warm- 
hearted king,  or  his  cold-blooded,  iron 
daughter.  Lears  rage  broke  into  curses, 
but  ended  in  tears  that  were  like  drops  of 
blood  from  his  wounded  heart,  and  at  last 
he  turned  away  from  that  ungrateful  ser- 
pent, and  journej-ed  to  the  Court  of  Re- 
gan. 

But  a  letter  from  Goneril  reached  that 
palace  before  the  ex-king,  and  he  actual- 
ly found  some  difficulty  in  obtaining  an 
audience  of  his  own  daughter. 

At  last  she  and  her  husband  met  him, 
but.  outside  the  house. 

At  sight  of  her  his  swelling  breast 
overflowed,  and  he  told  her  her  sister  was 
ungrateful,  and  had  struck  him  to  the 
heart.     "Oh,  Regan  !  "  he  sobbed. 

Regan  calmly  begged  him  to  be  pa- 
tient, and  said  he  had  misunderstood  her 
sister:  it  was  for  his  own  good  she  had 
restrained  the  riots  of  his  followers.  She 
reminded  him  lie  was  old,  insinuated  he 
was  in  his  dotage,  and  needed  the  control 
of  wiser  people  :  and  to  conclude,  she  cool- 
ly advised  him  to  return  to  her  sister,  and 
beg  her  pardon. 

"What  !  "  cried  he:  "when  she  has 
abated  me  of  half  my  train,  looked  black 
upon  me.  and  struck  her  serpent  fangs 
into  my  heart  !  "     He  then,  in  his  rage, 


170 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES  READE. 


called  down  all  manner  of  curses  on  his 
eldest  daughter. 

Says  Regan,  "  Why,  you  will  be  cursing 
me  next." 

In  the  midst  of  this  who  should  arrive 
but  Goneril  and  her  attendants,  on  a  visit 
to  Regan. 

Regan  received  her  instantly  with  a 
cordiality  she  had  not  shown  to  her  father 
and  benefactor. 

Learwas  amazed  at  that,  after  what  he 
had  said,  and  exclaimed.  "Oh,  Regan, 
will  you  take  her  by  i  lie  hand  ?  " 

It  was  Goneril  who  replied  to  this,  and 
with  the  most  galling  and  contemptuous 
insolence  : 

Whynol  by  the  hand,  sir?    How  have  I  ofl 
All's  not  offense  t  hal  Bods 

■  :  ms  so. 

At    this   t  In-   poor  old    king  pr 

Heaven  fur  put  ience. 

Regan  paid  no  attenl  ion  to  that,  but 
coldly   stuck    to    her   point.      Sin-    advised 

him    to    «■ ply    \\  it  b    <  kraeril's    terms, 

strike  "if  half  Ins  knights,  and  conclude 
his  month.  After  thai  be  could  come  bo 
her.  At  presenl  his  visits  would  not  be 
convenienl . 

Lear  refused,  lint  Iy. 

••As  you  please,"  said  Goneril,  coldly. 

Regan  persisted,  and  said  that. 
fifty  followers  were  too  many  in  another 
prison's  house.      How  could  so  many  peo- 
ple, under  two  commands,  hold  amity? 

Then  Goneril  pul  in  her  word.  Why 
could  he  not  be  attended  on  by  their 
servants  ? 

"'I'o  be  sure."  said  Regan.  ••Then,  if 
they  were  disrespectful,  we  could  control 
them.  At  all  events."  said  she,  ••when 
you  come  to  me,  bring  no  more  than 
twenty-five." 

He  asked  her  if  that  was  her  last  word  : 
she  said  it  was.  Then  the  poor  old  king 
said  Goneril  was  better  than  she  was. 
Y''s.  he  would  go  back  with  Goneril.  and 
dismiss  half  his  retinue. 

One  would  have  thought  these  clever. 
heartless  women  had  bandied  the  poor  old 
man  to  and  fro  enough.  But  Goneril  had 
no  mercy:  this  was  her  reply,  when  he 
consented  to  her  own  proposition  : 


Goneril.  Hear  me.  my  lord  : 

What  need  you  flve-and-twenty,  ten.  or  five. 
To  follow  in  a  house  where  twice  so  many 
Have  a  command  to  tend  you? 

Began.  What  need  one  f 

So  they  trumped  each  other's  cards, 
and  coldly  drove  him  wild. 

He  raged  and  stormed  at  them,  un- 
heeded. He  wept  with  agony,  unheeded. 
He  left  them  both,  and  went  forth  into 
the  stormy  night  a  houseless  king,  a  ban- 
ished father. 

Crushed  vanity  is  hard  to  bear. 
Wound*  i  on     is     hard    to     beat . 

Under  the  double  agony  the  poor  old 
king  lost  Ins  reason,  and  wandered  about. 
the  kingdom  like  a  beggar. 

Meantime  his  despised  curses  began  to 
work,  for  his  wicked  daughters  prepared 
their  own  chastisemenl  l>\  their  own 
crimes;  and  here  the  poet  has  well  shown 
that  the  hearts  cold  to  divine  affection 
could  be  hot  with  illicit  love  as  well  as 
spurred  by  greed. 

But  now  it  was  reported  in  France  how 
King  had  been  abused,  and  Queen 
Cordelia,  indignant,  invaded  the  kingdom 
with  a  French  army.  Her  emissaries 
found  the  pool-  king  in  a  miserable  condi- 
tion, living  in  rags,  and  sleeping  in  out- 
houses :,inl  stables.  She  had  him  hud,  ail 
on  a  fair  bed  in  her  ow  n  tent . 
with  music  softh  playing,  and  hei  ",  n 
physician  waiting  on  him.  She  herself 
nursed  him  with  deep  anxiety  for  his 
wakii  i 

All  was  changed.  She  who  in  his  hour 
of  pridi  and  prosperity  hoi  said  she  loved 
him  only  as  every  daughter  ought  to  love 
her  father,  now  overflowed  with  passion- 
ate tenderness.  She  took  his  gray  head 
to  her  filial  bosom,  and  bemoaned  him. 
••  Was  this  a  face,'"  said  she.  "  to 
posed  to  the  warring  winds?  On  such  a 
night,  too!  Why,  I  would  have  given 
shelter  to  my  enemy's  dog,  though  he  had 
bitten  me.  And  wast  thou  fain,  poor 
father,  to  hovel  thee  with  swine  on  musty 
straw  ?  " 

While  she  was  t  hus  lament  ing  over  him, 
the  sore-tried  king  awoke  ;  but  not  his 
memory.  He  thought  he  had  been  dead, 
and  told  them  they  did  wrong  to  take  him 


THE    TWO    LEARS. 


171 


out  of  the  grave  where  he  rested  from  his 
sufferings.  The  happy  change  in  his  con- 
dition brought  him  no  joy  at  first ;  it  did 
but  confuse  and  puzzle  him.  He  looked 
at  Cordelia,  and  saw  she  was  a  queen, 
and  tried  to  kneel  to  her.  But  she  would 
not  let  him,  and  kneeled  to  him  instead, 
and  begged  him  to  hold  his  hand  over  her 
and  give  her  a  parent's  blessing.  Seeing 
so  great  a  lady  at  his  feet  craving  his 
blessing  let  some  light  into  his  distracted 
mind,  and  drew  from  the  once  fiery  old 
man  sweet  piteous  words  that  have  made 
many  an  eye  wet  : 

Pray  do  not  mock  me  : 
I  am  a  very  foolish,  fond  old  man, 
Fourscore  and  upward  ;  and  to  deal  plainly, 
I  [ear  I  am  not  in  my  perfect  mind. 
Methinks  I  should  know  you,  and  know  this  man  ; 
Yet  I  am  doubtful  ;  for  I  am  mainly  ignorant 
What  place  this  is  :  and  all  the  skill  I  have 
Remembers  not  these  garments:  nor  I  know  not 
Where  I  did  lodge  last  night.     Do  not  laugh  at 

me  ; 
For.  as  I  am  a  man  I  think  this  lady 
To  be  my  child  Cordelia. 

Cord.  And  so  lam.  I  am. 

Then  the  poor  soul  seeing  her  weep, 
bade  her  not  cry,  and  offered  to  drink 
poison  if  she  chose  ;  for  he  said  she  had 
far  more  reason  to  hate  him  than  her 
sisters  had. 

But  she  soon  convinced  him  of  her  love, 
and  from  that  time  they  never  parted. 

At  this  very  time  Groneril  and  Regan 
died  by  poison  and  suicide,  and  so  paid 
the  forfeit  of  their  crimes. 

But  all  this  was  on  the  eve  of  a  battle 
between  the  French  and  English  forces, 
and  in  that  battle,  deplorable  to  relate, 
Cordelia  was  slain,  and  Lear  mustered 
strength  to  kill  her  assassin,  and  then  the 
last  chord  of  his  sore-tried  heart  gave 
way,  and  he  died  by  the  side  of  his  loved 
daughter,  who  had  professed  so  little, ye1 
had  done  so  much,  and  died  for  him. 

This  is  the  heart  of  Shakespeare's  story. 
There  is  an  inferior  hand  visible  in  parts 
of  it ;  it  is  clogged  with  useless  characters 
and  superfluous  atrocities,  and  the  death 
of  Cordelia  is  revolting,  and  a  sacrifice  of 
the  narrative  to  stage  policy.  But  all 
that  pertains  directly  to  King  Lear  :s  ex- 


quisite, and  so  masterly  that  the  tale  has 
extinguished  the  legend.  Historically  in- 
correct, it  is  true  in  art,  all  but  the  sacri- 
fice of  Cordelia,  which,  coupled  with  the 
other  deaths,  turns  the  theater  into  a 
shambles,  and,  above  all,  disturbs  the  true 
motive  of  the  tale.  When  the  reader 
finds  the  sore-tried  old  man  lying  on  a 
soft  couch,  tended  by  Queen  Cordelia,  and 
when  at  last  he  knows  her,  and  they 
mingle  their  tears  and  their  love,  the 
reader  sees  this  is  the  lightening  before 
death,  and  the  mad  king  has  recovered 
Ins  wits  to  be  just  to  his  one  child,  and 
then  to  fall  asleep  after  life's  fitful  fever. 
Against  such  a.  tale,  so  told,  no  previous 
legend  can  fight.  Under  such  a  spell  you 
can  neither  conceive  nor  believe  that  Lear 
recovered  his  kingdom,  and  caroused 
again  at  the  head  of  his  knights,  and 
toasted  his  one  child.  Youth  may  recover 
any  wound  ;  but  old  age  and  royal  vanity 
crushed  and  trampled  on.  and  paternal 
love  struck  to  the  heart  by  the.  serpent's 
tooth  of  filial  ingratitude,  what  should 
they  do  but  rage  and  die? 

Yet  there  is  a  legend,  almost  as  old  as 
"Lear,"  of  a  father  whom  his  children 
treated  as  Goneril  and  Regan  treated 
Lear ;  but  he  suffered  and  survived,  and 
his  heart  turned  bitter  instead  of  break- 
ing. 

Of  this  prose  Lear  the  story  is  all  over 
Europe,  and,  like  most  old  stories,  told 
vilely.  To  that,  however,  there  happens 
to  be  one  exception,  and  the  readers  of 
this  collection  shall  have  the  benefit  of  it. 

In  a  certain  part  of  Ireland,  a  long 
time  ag'o,  lived  a  wealthy  old  farmer 
whose  name  was  Brian  Taafe.  His 
three  sons,  Guillaum,  Shamus  and  Gar- 
ret, worked  on  the  farm.  The  old  man 
had  a  great  affection  for  them  all;  and 
finding  himself  grow  unfit  for  work,  he 
resolved  to  hand  his  farm  over  to  them, 
and  sit  quiet  by  the  fireside.  But  as  that 
was  not  a  thing  to  be  done  lightly,  he 
thought  he  would  just  put  them  to  their 
trial.  He  would  take  the  measure  of 
their  intelligence,  and  then  of  their  af- 
fection. 

Proceeding  111  this  order,  he  gave  them 


172 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


each  a  hundred  pounds,  and  quietly 
watched  to  see  what  they  did   with   it. 

Well,  Guillauin  and  Shamus  put  their 
hundred  pounds  out  to  interest,  every 
penny;  but  when  the  old  man  questioned 
Garret  where  his  hundred  pounds  was. 
the  young  man  said,  "  I  spent  it.  father." 

"  Spent  it  ? '"  said  the  old  man,  aghasl . 
"  Is  it  the  whole  hundred  pounds  ?  " 

•'  Sure  I  thought  you  told  us  we  might 
lay  it  out  as  we  plaised." 

"  Is  that  a  raison  ye'd  waste  the  whole 
of  it  in  a  year,  ye  prodigal?"  cried  the 
old  man  :  and  he  trembled  at  the  idea  of 
his  substance  falling  into  such  hands. 

Some  months  after  tins  he  applied  the 
second  test . 

He  convened  his  sons,  and  addressed 
them  solemnly:  "I'm  an  old  man.  my 
children;  my  hair  is  white  on  my  head, 
ami  it's  time  1  was  giving  over  trade 
and  making  my  sowl."  The  two  elder 
overflowed  sympathy.  He  then  gave  the 
dairj  -farm  and  t  he  Hill  to  Shamt 
the  meadows  to  Guillaum.  Thereupon 
these  two  vied   with  eai  expres- 

sions of  love  and  gratitude.  Bu1  Garrel 
said  never  a  word  ;  and  i  Ins.  coupled  w  it  li 
Ins  behavior  aboul  the  hundred  pounds, 
so  maddened  the  old  man  I  hat 
Garret's  portion,  namely,  the  home  and 
the  home-farm,  to  his  elder  brothers  to 
hold  in  common.  Garrel  be  disinherited 
on  the  spot,  and  in  t\\u-  form.  Thai  is  to 
saj  .  he  did  not  overlook  him  nor  pass  him 
by:  but  even  as  spiteful  testators  used  bo 

leave  the  disinherited    one  a  shilling,  that 

he  mighl  not  be  able  to  say  he  had  been 
inadvertently  omitted,  and  it  was  all  a 
mistake,  old  Brian  Taafe  solemnly  pre- 
sented young  Garrel  Taafe  with  a  hazel 
staff  and  a  small  has'.  Poor  Garret  knew 
very  well  what  that  meant.  He  shoul- 
dered the  bag.  and  went  forth  into  the 
wide  world  with  a  sad  heart,  but  a  si- 
lent tongue.  His  dog,  Lurcher,  was  for 
following  him,  but  he  drove  him  hack 
with  a  stone. 

On  the  strength  of  the  new  arrange- 
ment, Guillaum  and  Shamus  married  di- 
rectly, and  brought  their  wives  home,  for 
it  was  a  large  house,  and  room  for  all. 

But  the  old  farmer  was  not  contented 


to  be  quite  a  cipher,  and  he  kept  finding 
fault  with  this  and  that.  The  young  men 
became  more  and  more  impatient  of  his 
interference,  and  their  wives  fanned  the 
flame  with  female  pertinacity.  So  that 
the  house  was  divided,  and  a  very  home 
of  discord. 

This  weiii  on  getting  worse  and  worse, 
till  at  last,  one  winter  afternoon.  Shamus 
defied  his  father  openly  before  all  the 
rest,  ind  said,"I'd  like  to  know  what 
would  plaize  ye.  May  he  ye'd  like  to 
turn  us  all  out    as  ye  did  Garret." 

Tie-  old  farmer  replied,  with  sudden 
dignity.  •  If  I  oid.  I'd  take  no  more 
than  I  gave." 

"What  good  was  your  giving  it?" 
said  Guillaum;  "we  gel  no  comfort  of 
it  while   \  on  are  in  t  he  house." 

"Do  you  tall;  that  way  to  me.  too?" 
said  the  father,  deeply  grieved.  "If  it 
was  pom-  Garret  I  had.  he  wouldn't  use 
me  so." 

••"Much  thanks  the  poor  hoy  ever  got 
from  you."  said  one  of  t  he  women,  with 
us  tongue  :  t  hen  l  he  ot  her  woman. 
finding  she  could  counl  on  male  support, 
suggested  to  her  father-in-law  to  take  his 
stick  and  pack  and  follow  his  beloved  <  {ar- 
ret. ••  Sure  he'd  find  him  begging  about 
the  count  hry." 

At  the  women's  tongues  the  wounded 
hay. 

••  1  don't  wonder  al  anything  I  hear  ye 
saw  Ye  never  yet  heard  of  anything 
woman  would  have  a  hand 
in — only  mischief  always.  If  ye  ask  who 
made  such  a  road,  or  buill  a  bridge,  or 
wrote  a  great  histhory,  or  did  a  great 
action,  you'll  never  hear  it's  a  woman 
done  it;  but  if  there  is  a  jewel  with 
swords  and  guns,  or  two  boys  cracking 
each  other's  crowns  with  shillalahs,  or  a 
daily  secret  let  out.  or  a  character  ruined, 
or  a  man  brought  to  the  gallows,  or  mis- 
chief made  bet  ween  a  father  and  his  own 
flesh  and  blood,  then  I'll  engage  you'll 
hear  a  woman  had  some  call  to  it.  We 
needn't  have  recoorse  to  histhory  to  know 
your  doin's,  'tis  undher  our  eyes;  for 
'twas  the  likes  o'  ye  two  burned  Throy, 
and  made  the  king  o'  Leinsther  rebel 
aerainst  Brian  Boru." 


THE    TWO    LEARS. 


173 


These  shafts  of  eloquence  struck  home  ; 
the  women  set  up  a  screaming,  and  pulled 
their  caps  off  their  heads,  which  in  that 
part  was  equivalent  to  gentlefolks  draw- 
ing their  swords. 

"  Oh,  murther  !  murther !  was  it  for 
this  I  married  you,  Guillaum  Taafe  ?  " 

'•'Och,  Shamus,  will  ye  sit  an'  hear  me 
compared  to  the  likes  ?  Would  I  rebel 
against  Brian  Boru,  Shamus,  a'ra  gal?  " 

"Don't  heed  him,  avourneen,"  said 
Shamus  ;  "he  is  an  oukl  man." 

But  she  would  not  be  pacified.  "  Oh, 
vo  !  vo  !  If  ever  I  thought  the  likes  'ud 
be  said  of  me,  that  I'd  rebel  against  Brian 
Boru  !" 

As  for  the  other,  she  prepared  to  leave 
the  house.  "  Guillaum,"  said  she,  "  I'll 
never  stay  a  day  undher  your  roof  with 
them  as  would  say  I'd  burn  Throy.  Does 
he  forget  he  ever  had  a  mother  himself  ? 
Ah  !  'tis  a  bad  apple,  that  is  what  it  is, 
that  despises  the  tree  it  sprung  from." 

All  this  heated  Shamus,  so  that  he  told 
the  women  sternly  to  sit  down,  for  the 
offender  should  go  ;  and  upon  that,  to 
show  they  were  of  one  mind.  Guillaum  de- 
liberately opened  the  door.  Lurcher  ran 
out.  and  the  wind  and  the  rain  rushed  in. 
It  was  ajstormy  night. 

Then  the  old  man  took  fright,  and  hum- 
bled himself  : 

"Ah!  Shamus,  Guillaum,  achree,  let 
ye  have  it  as  ye  will ;  I'm  sorry  for  what 
I  said,  a'ra  gal.  Don't  turn  me  out  on 
the  high-road  in  my  ould  days,  Guillaum, 
and  I'll  engage  I'll  niver  open  my  mouth 
against  one  o'  ye  the  longest  daj7  I  live. 
Ah  !  Shamus,  it  isn't  long-  I  have  to  stay 
wid  ye,  anyway.  Yer  own  hair  will  be  as 
white  as  mine  yet.  plaise  God  !  and  ye'll 
be  thanking  Him  ye  showed  respect  to 
mine  this  night." 

But  they  were  all  young  and  of  one 
mind,  and  they  turned  him  out  and  barred 
the  door. 

He  crept  away,  shivering  in  the  wind 
and  rain,  till  he  got  on  the  lee  side  of  a 
stone  wall,  and  there  he  stopped  and 
asked  himself  whether  he  could  live 
through  the  night. 

Presently  something  cold  and  smooth 
poked  against  his  hand  :  it  was  a  large 


dog  that  had  followed  him  unobserved  till 
he  stopped.  By  a  white  mark  on  his 
breast  he  saw  it  was  Lurcher,  Garret's 
dug. 

•  •  Ah  ! ' '  said  the  poor  old  wanderer, 
••  you  are  not  so  wise  a  dog  as  I  thought, 
to  follow  me."  When  he  spoke  to  the 
dog,  the  dog  fondled  him.  Then  he  burst 
out  sobbing  and  cr3'ing,  "Ah,  Lurcher! 
Garret  was  not  wise  either ;  but  he  would 
niver  have  turned  me  to  the  door  this  bit- 
ter night,  nor  even  thee."  And  so  he 
moaned  and  lamented.  But  Lurcher 
pulled  his  coat,  and  by  his  movements 
conveyed  to  him  that  he  should  not  stay 
there  all  night :  so  then  he  crept  on  and 
knocked  at  more  than  one  door,  but  did 
not  obtain  admittance,  it  was  so  tem- 
pestuous. At  last  he  lay  down  exhausted 
on  some  straw  in  the  corner  of  an  out- 
house :  but  Lurcher  lay  close  to  him,  and 
it  is  probable  the  warmth  of  the  dog  saved 
his  life  that  night. 

Next  day  the  wind  and  rain  abated ; 
but  this  aged  man  had  other  ills  to  fight 
against  beside  winter  and  rough  weather. 
The  sense  of  his  sons'  ingratitude  and  his 
own  folly  drove  him  almost  mad.  Some- 
times he  would  curse  and  thirst  for  ven- 
geance, sometimes  he  would  shed  tears 
that  seemed  to  scald  his  withered  cheeks. 
He  got  into  another  county  and  begged 
from  door  to  door.  As  for  Lurcher,  he 
did  not  beg  ;  he  used  to  disappear,  often 
for  an  hour  at  a  time,  but  always  re- 
turned, and  often  with  a  rabbit  or  even  a 
hare  in  his  mouth.  Sometimes  the  friends 
exchanged  them  for  a  gallon  of  meal, 
sometimes  they  roasted  them  in  the 
woods;  Lurcher  was  a  civilized  dog,  and 
did  not  like  them  raw. 

Wandering  hither  and  thither,  Brian 
Taafe  came  at  last  within  a  few  miles  of 
his  own  house  ;  but  he  soon  had  cause  to 
wish  him  himself  further  off  it ;  for  here 
he  met  his  first  downright  rebuff,  and, 
cruel  to  saj',  he  owed  it  to  his  hard- 
hearted sons.  One  recognized  him  as  the 
father  of  that  rogue  Guillaum  Taafe,  who 
had  cheated  him  in  the  sale  of  a  horse, 
and  another  as  the  father  of  that  thief 
Shamus.  who  had  sold  him  a  diseased  cow 
that   died    the  week   after.     So,    for   the 


174 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


first  time  since  he  was  driven  out  of  his 
home,  he  passed  the  night  supperless.  for 
houses  did  not  lie  close  together  in  that 
part. 

Cold,  hungry,  houseless,  and  distracted 
with  grief  at  what  he  had  been  and  now 
was,  nature  gave  way  at  last,  and.  un- 
able to  outlast  the  weary,  bitter  night, 
he  lost  his  senses  just  before  dawn,  and 
lay  motionless  on  the  hard  road. 

The  chances  were  he  must  die  ;  bul  just 
at  Death's  door  his  luck  turned. 

Lurcher  put  lus  feel  over  him  and  Ins 
chin  upon  his  breast   to  guard  him 

ften  guarded  Garret's  coat,  and 
that  kept  a  little  warmth  in  his  heart; 
and  at  the  very  dawn  of  day  the  door  of 
a  farmhouse  opened,  and  the  master  came 
out  upon  Ins  business,  and  saw  something 
unusual  lying  in  the  road  a  good  way  off. 
So  he  went  toward  it,  and  found  Brian 
Taafe  in  that  condition.  This  farmer  was 
very  well  to  do,  but  he  ban  known 
trouble,  and  it  had  made  him  charitable. 
!i  hallooed  to  ins  men,  and  bad  t  he 
old  man  taken  m  .  ed  bis  w  lie  too, 

aim  bade  her  observe  that  it  was  a  rever- 
end face,  though  he  was  all  in  tatters. 
They  laid  him  between  hoi  blankets,  and. 
when  be  came  to  a  bit.  gave  him  warm 
drink,  and  at  last  a  good  meal.  He  re- 
covered his  spirits,  and  thanked  them 
wit  h  a  certain  dignity. 

When  he  w:is  quite  comfortable,  and 
not  before,  they  asked  him  bis  name. 

■  \  i  !  don'1  ask  me  t  bat."  said  be. 
piteously.  "It's  a  bail  name  I  have,  and  it 
used  to  be  a  good  one,  too.  Doift  ask 
me.  or  maybe  you'll  put  me  out.  as  the 
others  old.  for  the  fault  of  my  two  sons. 
It  is  hard  to  he  t  urned  from  my  own  door, 
let  alone  from  other  honest  men's  doors, 
through  the  viiyms."  said  he. 

So  the  farmer  was  kindly,  and  said. 
"  Never  mind  your  name,  fill  your  belly." 

But  by  and  by  the  man  went  ou1  into 
the  yard,  and  then  the  wife  could  not  re- 
strain her  curiosity.  "  Why,  good  man," 
said  she.  ••  sure  you  are  too  decent  a  man 
to  be  ashamed  of  your  name." 

'•I'm  too  decent  not  to  be  ashamed  of 
it."  saiil  Brian.  *•  But  you  are  right ;  an 
honest  man  should  tell  his  name  though 


they  druv  him  out  of  heaven  for  it.  I  am 
Brian  Taafi — that  was." 

•■  Not  Brian  Taafe  the  strong  farmer  at 
Corrans  ?  " 

"Ay,  madam;  I'm  all  that's  left  of 
him." 

••  Have  you  a  sou  called  Garret  ?  " 

"I  had.  then." 

The  woman  spoke  no  more  to  him,  but 
ran  screaming  to  the  door :  "  Here,  Tom  ! 
Tom  !  come  here  I  "  cried  she  :  "  Tom  ! 
Tom  !  "  As  Lurcher,  a  very  sympathetic 
dog,  flew  to  the  door  and  yelled  and  barked 
fierely  in  support  of  this  invocation,  the 
hullaboosoon  brought  the  farmer  running 
in. 

"Oh,  Tom,  asthore,"  cried  she,  "it's 
Mr.  Taafe.  the  father  of  Garrel  Taafe 
himself." 

"Oh,  Lord  !  "  cried  t  be  farmer,  in  equal 
agitation,  .and  stared  at  him.  "  My  bles- 
sing on  the  day  von  overset  foot  within 
i  hese  doors  !  "  Then  he  ran  to  the  door 
and  hallooed:  "Hy,  Murphy!  Ellen.' 
come  here,  ye  divils  !  " 

Lurcher  supported  the  call  with  great 
energy.     In  i  ittle  boy  and  girl. 

'•  Look  a1  this  man  with  all  the  eyes  in 
your  body  !"  said  lie.  "This  is  Misther 
■  ■  rtt  t  Taafe  t  hat  saved 
us  all  from  ruin  and  d est  ruction  entirely." 
He  then  turned  to  Mr.  Taafe.  and  told 
him.  a  little  more  calmly,  "that  years 
ery  haporth  thej  bad  was  going  to 
lie  carted  for  the  rent  :  but.  Garret  Taafe 
came  by,  | M it  bis  hand  in  his  pocket .  toe, 
out  thirty  pounds,  and  cleared  them  in  a 
moment.      It  was  a  way  he  ban  ;    we  were 

no1  the  onh  ,  nes  in-  saved  that  way,  so 
long  as  he  had  it  to  give." 

The  old  man  did  not  hear  these  last 
words:  his  eyes  were  opened,  the  iron 
entered  his  soul,  and  he  overflowed  with 
grief  and  penitence. 

"  Och,  murther  !  murther  !  "  he  cried. 
"My  poor  boy  !  what  had  I  to  do  at  all 
to  go  and  turn  you  adrift,  as  I  done, 
for  no  raison  in  life !  "  Then,  with  a  pit- 
eous, apologetic  wail,  "I  tuck  the  wrong 
for  the  right  :  that's  the  way  the  world 
is  blinded.  Och,  Garret.  Garret,  what 
will  I  do  with  the  thoughts  of  it?  An' 
those  two  vilyians  that  I  gave  it  all  to, 


THE    TWO    LEARS. 


175 


and  they  turned  me  out  in  my  ould  days, 
as  I  done  you.  No  mattheiy'  and  he  fell 
into  a  sobbing-  and  a  trembling-  that  near- 
ly killed  him  for  the  second  time. 

But  the  true  friends  of  his  son  Garret 
nursed  him  through  that,  and  comforted 
him  ;  so  he  recovered.  But,  as  he  did 
live,  he  outlived  those  tender  feelings 
whose  mortal  wounds  had  so  nearly  killed 
him.  When  he  recovered  this  last  blow  he 
brooded  and  brooded,  but  never  shed  an- 
other tear. 

One  day,  seeing  him  pretty  well  restored, 
as  he  thought,  the  good  farmer  came  to 
him  with  a  fat  hag  of  gold.  "  Sir,"  said 
he,  *'soon  after  your  son  helped  us,  luck 
set  in  our  way.  Mary  she  had  a  legacy  ; 
we  had  a  wonderful  crop  of  flax,  and  with 
that  plant  "tis  either  kill  or  cure  ;  and 
then  I  found  lead  in  the  hill,  and  they 
pay  a  dale  o'  money  for  leave  to  mine 
there.  I'm  almost  ashamed  to  take  it.  I 
tell  you  all  this  to  show  you  I  can  afford 
to  pay  you  back  that  thirty  pound*,  and 
if  you  please  I'll  count  it  out." 

"No!"  said  Mr.  Taafe.  "I'll  not  take 
Garret's  money  ;  but  if  you  will  do  me  a 
favor,  lend  me  the  whole  bag  for  a  week, 
for  at  the  sight  of  it  I  see  a  way  to — 
Whisper." 

Then,  with  bated  breath  and  in  strict 
confidence,  he  hinted  to  the  farmer  a 
scheme  of  vengeance.  The  farmer  was 
not  even  to  tell  it  to  his  wife;  "for,"  said 
old  Brian,  "the  very  birds  carry  these 
things  about ;  and  sure  it  is  knowing 
divils  I  have  to  do  with,  especially  the  wo- 
men." 

Next  day  the  farmer  lent  him  a  good 
suit  and  drove  him  to  a  quiet  corner  scarce 
a  hundred  yards  from  his  old  abode.  The 
old  farmer  got  down  and  left  him.  Lurch- 
er walked  at  his  master's  heels.  It  was 
noon  and  the  sun  shining  bright. 

The  wife  of  Shamus  Taafe  came  out  to 
hang  up  her  man's  shirt  to  dry.  when,  lo  ! 
scarce  thirty  yards  from  her,  she  saw  an 
old  man  seated  counting  out  gold  on  a 
broad  stone  at  his  feet.  At  first  she 
thought  it  must  be  one  of  the  good  people 
— or  fairies — or  else  she  must  be  dream- 
ing ;  but  no  !  cocking  her  head  on  one  side, 
she  saw  for  certain  the  profile  of  Brian 


Taafe,  and  he  was  counting  a  mass  of 
gold.  She  ran  in  and  screamed  her  news 
rather  than  spoke  it. 

'•  Nonsense,  woman  !  "  said  Shamus, 
roughly;  "it  is  not  in  nature." 

■'  Then  go  and  see  for  yourself,  man  ! "' 
said  she. 

Shamus  was  not  the  only  one  to  take 
this  advice.  They  all  stole  out  on  tip-toe, 
and  made  a  sort  of  semicircle  of  curiosity. 
It  was  no  dream;  there  were  piles  and 
piles  of  gold  glowing  in  the  sun,  and  old 
Brian  with  a  horse  -  pistol  across  his 
knees ;  and  even  Lurcher  seemed  to  have 
his  eyes  steadily  fixed  on  the  glittering- 
booty. 

When  they  had  thoroughly  drunk  in 
this  most  unexpected  scene,  they  began 
to  talk  in  agitated  whispers  ;  but  even  in 
talking  they  never  looked  at  each  other — 
their  eyes  were  glued  on  the  gold . 

Saul  Guillaum :  "Ye  did  very  wrong, 
Shamus,  to  turn  out  the  old  father  as  you 
done;  see  now  what  we  all  lost  by  it. 
That's  a  part  of  the  money  he  laid  by, 
and  we'll  never  see  a  penny  of  it."' 

The  wives  whispered  that  was  a  foolish 
thing  to  say  :  "  Leave  it  to  us,"  said 
they,    "and   we'll  have   it  all  one  day." 

This  being  agreed  to.  the  women  stole 
toward  the  old  man,  one  on  each  side. 
Lurcher  rose  and  snarled,  and  old  Brian 
hurried  his  gold  into  his  ample  pockets, 
and  stood  on  the  defensive. 

"  Oh,  father  !  and  is  it  you  come  back  ? 
Oh,  the  Lord  be  praised  !  Oh,  the  weary 
day  since  you  left  us,  and  all  our  good 
luck  wid  ye !  " 

Brian  received  this  and  similar  speeches 
with  fury  and  reproaches.  Then  they 
humbled  themselves  and  wept,  cursed 
their  ill-governed  tongues,  and  bewailed 
the  men's  folly  in  listening  to  them. 
They  flattered  him  and  cajoled  him,  and 
ordered  their  husbands  to  come  forward 
and  ask  the  old  man's  pardon,  and  not 
let  him  ever  leave  them  again.  The  sup- 
ple sons  were  all  penitence  and  affection 
directly.  Brian  at  last  consented  to  stay, 
but  stipulated  for  a  certain  chamber  with 
a  key  to  it.  "  For,"  said  he,  "  I  have  got 
my  strong-box  to  take  care  of,  as  well  as 
mvself." 


176 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


They  pricked  up  their  ears  directly  at 
mention  of  the  strong-box,  and  asked 
where  it  was. 

"Oh!  it  is  not  far,  but  I  can't  carry 
it.     Give  me  two  boys  to  fetch   it." 

"Oh!  Guillaum  and  Shamus  would 
carry  it  or  anything  to  oblige  a  long-lost 
father." 

So  they  went  with  him  to  the  farmer's 
cart,  and  brought  in  the  box,  which  was 
pretty  large,  and.  above  all,  -cry  full 
and  heavy. 

He  was  once  more  king  "f  hisown  house, 
and  flattered  and  pel  ted  as  he  l. ad  nei  er 
been  since  he  gave  away  1  j i  — -  estate.  Ti> 
be  sure,  he  fed  this  by  nivsi  erious  hints 
f  hat  In'  had  other  lands  besides 
thai  part  of  tin'  country,  and  that,  in- 
deed, tin-  full  exfcenl  of  his  possessions 
would  never  be  known  until  his  will  was 
read:  which  will  was  safely  locked  away 
in  his  strong-box     with  <>ll<>  r  things. 

And  so  he  passed  a  pleasanl  I  tme,  im- 
bi1  tered  only  b\  regrets,  and  very  poignant 
they  were,  thai  he  could  hear  nothing  of 
his  son  Garret.  Lurcher  also  was  taken 
great  car  i  of,  ami  became  old  and  lazy. 

Mut  shocks  thai  do  not  kill  inn. 
Before  he  reached  threescore  ami  ten. 
Brian  Taafe's  night-work  and  troubles 
told  upon  him.  and  he  drew  near  his  end. 
He  was  quite  conscious  of  i:.  and  an- 
nounced his  own  departure,  bul  not  in  a 
regretful  way.  He  had  b  •  omi  quite  a 
philosopher;  and  indeed  there  was  a  sorl 
of  chuckle  about  the  old  fellow  in  speak- 
ing of  his  own  death,  which  his  daughters- 
in-law  secretly  denounced  as  unchristian, 
and.  what  was  worse,  unchancy. 

Whenever  he  did  mention  the  expected 
event,  he  was  sun'  to  say,  ■•Ami  mind, 
boys,  my  will  is  in  that  chest ." 

•'Don't  spake  of  it.  father."  was  the 
reply. 

When  he  was  dying,  he  called  for  both 
bis  sons,  and  said,  in  a  feeble  voice.  ■''  I 
was  a  strong  farmer,  and  come  of  honest 
folk.  Ye'll  give  me  a  good  wakin',  boys, 
an*  a  gran'  funeral." 

They  promised  this  very  heartily. 

'•And  after  the  funeral  ye'll  all  come 
here  together,  and  open  the  will,  the 
children  an'    all.     All   but  Garret.     I've 


left  him  nothing,  poor  boy,  for  sure  he's 
not  in  this  world.  I'll  maybe  see  him 
where  I'm  goin'." 

So  there  was  a  grand  wake,  and  the 
viri  ues  of  t  lie  deceased  and  his  professional 
importance  were  duly  howled  by  an  old 
lady  who  excelled  in  this  lugubrious  art. 
Then  the  funeral  was  hurried  on.  because 
they  were  in  a   hurry  to  open  the  chest. 

The  funeral  was  jmned  in  the  church- 
yard by  a  stranger,  who  muffled  his  face, 
and    shed    the    only    tears    that    fell   upon 

a  ve.  Aft'i'  the  funeral  he  stai  ed 
behind  all   the   resl    ami    mourned,  lint  he 

l;e  fa  mm  al  1  he  feast  which  fol- 
lowed, ami  behold!  il  was  Garret,  come 
a  day  too  late.  He  was  welcomed  with 
exuberant  affection,  not  being  down  m 
the  will:  but  they  did  not  ask  him  to 
sleep  there.  They  wanted  to  be  alone, 
and  read  the  will.  He  begged  for  some 
reminiscence  of  his  fatlu  i\  and  they  gave 
him  Lurcher.  So  he  put  Lurcher  into  his 
gig.  and  drove  away  to  that  good  farmer. 
sure  of  his  welcome,  and  praying  God  he 
might     find     him    alive.       Perhaps     his 

,  would    not    have   let   him  go  so 

had  they  known  he  had  made  a 
large  fortune   m  America,  and  was  going 

to  bu\    quite  a  slice  of  the  county. 

( in  t  he  way  he  kept  talking  to  Lu 
and  reminding  him  of  certain  sports  they 
had  enjoyed  together,  ami  feats  of  poach- 
ing they  had  performed.  Poor  old  Lurch- 
er kept  pricking  his  ears  all  the  time, 
and  cudgeled  his  memory  as  to  the 
tones  of  the  voice  Dial  was  addressing 
him.  Garret  retailed  the  farm,  and  was 
received  tirst  with  stare,,  then  with  cries 
of  joy,  and  was  dragged  into  the  house, 
so  to  speak.  After  the  first  ardor  of  wel- 
come, he  told  them  he  had  arrived  only 
just  in  time  to  bury  his  father.  "And 
this  old  dog,"  said  he.  "  is  all  that's  left 
me  of  him.  He  was  mine  first,  but  when 
I  left,  he  took  to  father.  He  was  always 
.,  wise  dog."' 

••We  know  him,"' said  the  wife:  "he 
has  been  here  before."  And  she  was 
going  to  blurt  it  all  out.  bul  her  man  said . 
'■  Another  time,"  and  gave  her  a  look  as 
black  as  thunder,  which  wasn't  his  way 
at  all,  but  he  explained  to  her  afterward. 


THE    TWO    LEARS. 


177 


••  They  are  friends,  those  three,  over  the 
old  man's  grave.  We  should  think  twice 
before  we  stir  ill  blood  betune  'em."  So 
when  he  stopped  her,  she  turned  it  off 
cleverly  enough,  and  said  the  dear  old 
dog  must  have  his  supper.  Supper  they 
gave  him,  and  a  new  sheepskin  to  lie  on 
by  the  great  fire.  So  there  he  lay,  and 
seemed  to  doze. 

The  best  bed  in  the  house  was  laid  for 
Garret,  and  when  he  got  up  to  go  to  it, 
didn't  that  wise  old  dog  get  up  too  with 
an  effort,  and  move  stiffly  toward  Garret, 
and  lick  his  hand  ;  then  he  lay  down  again 
all  of  a  piece,  as  who  should  say,  "  I'm 
very  tired  of  it  all."  "He  knows  me 
now  at  last,  "said  Garret,  joyfully.  "That 
is  his  way  of  saying  good-night,  I  sup- 
pose. He  was  always  a  wonderful  wise 
dog." 

In  the  morning  they  found  Lurcher  dead 
and  stiff  on  the  sheepskin.  It  was  a  long 
good-night  he  had  bid  so  quietly  to  the 
friend  of  his  youth. 

Garret  shed  tears  over  him,  and  said, 
"  If  I  had  only  known  what  he  meant, 
I'd  have  sat  up  with  him.  But  I  never 
could  see  far.  He  was  a  deal  wiser 
for  a  dog  than  I  shall  ever  be  for  a 
man." 

Meantime  the  family  party  assembled 
in  the  bedroom  of  the  deceased.  Every 
trace  of  feigned  regret  had  left  their 
faces,  and  all  their  eyes  sparkled  with  joy 
and  curiosity.  They  went  to  open  the 
chest.  It  was  locked.  They  hunted  for 
the  key  ;  first  quietly,  then  fussily.  The 
women  found  it  at  last ,  sewed  up  in  the 
bed  :  •  they  cut  it  out  and  opened  the 
chest. 

The  first  thing  they  found  was  a  lot  of 
stones.  The3T  glared  at  them,  and  the 
color  left  their  faces.  What  deviltry  was 
this? 

Presently   thev  found   writing   on   one 


stone  -•'Look  below.'  Then  there  was 
a  reaction  and  a  loud  laugh.  "  The  old 
fox  was  afraid  the  money  and  parchments 
would  h\\  away,  so  he  kept   them  down." 

They  plunged  their  hands  in,  and  soon 
cleared  out  a  barrowful  of  stones,  till 
they  came  to  a  kind  of  paving-stone. 
They  lifted  this  carefully  out,  and  discov- 
ered a  good  new  rope  with  a  running 
noose,  and — the  will. 

It  was  headed  in  large  letters  finely  en- 
grossed : 

"THE   LAST    WILL   AND   TESTAMENT   OF 
BRIAN    TAAFE." 

But  the  body  of  the  instrument  was  in 
the  scrawl  of  the  testator. 

"  I  bequeath  all  the  stones  in  this  box 
to  the  hearts  that  could  turn  their  father 
and  benefactor  out  on  the  highway  that 
stormy  night. 

"  I  bequeath  this  rope  for  any  father 
to  hang  himself  with  who  is  fool  enough 
to  give  his  property  to  his  children  be- 
fore he  dies." 

This  is  a  prosaic  story  compared  with 
the  "Leat"  of  Shakespeare,  but  it  is  well 
told  by  Gerald  Griffin,  who  was  a  man 
of  genius.  Of  course  I  claim  little  merit 
but  that  of  setting  the  jewels.  Were  I 
to  tell  you  that  is  an  art,  I  suppose  you 
would  not  believe  it. 

I  have  put  the  two  stories  together, 
not  without  a  hope  that  the  juxtaposi- 
tion may  set  a  few  intelligent  people 
thinking.  It  is  very  interesting,  curious, 
and  instructive  to  observe  how  differ- 
ently the  same  events  operate  upon 
men  who  differ  in  character.  And  per. 
haps  "The  Two  Lears "  may  encourage 
that  vein  of  observation :  its  field  is 
boundless 


178 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


DOUBLES. 


We  live  in  an  age  of  bad  English. 
There  is  a  perverse  preference  for  weak 
foreign  to  strong  British  phrases,  and  a 
run  upon  abstracl  terms,  roundabout 
phrases,  polysyllables,  and  half-scien- 
tific jargon  on  simple  matters,  like  vel- 
vet  trimming  on  a  cotton  print. 

Addison  could  be  contenl  to  write, 
"My  being  bis  nearesl  neighbor  gave 
m«'  some  knowledge  of  bis  babits;"  bul 
our  contemporaries  musl  say,  "  The  fad 
of  my   being   his   nearesl    neighbor  g 

inc."    ele.        N.i  in     111.'     Brs1 

.  it  is  mil  "the  fact"  bul  "the 
circumstance  ;  "  ind  in  I  be  nexl .  bo1  b 
"fact"  and  "circumstance"  are  super- 
fluous ami  barbarous.  Probably  the 
schoolboys  who  invented  this  circum- 
locution had  been  told  by  some  village 
schoolmaster  thai  ■  •■  verb  can  only  he 
governed  by  a  ooun  substantive.  Pure 
illusion  !  it  can  be  governed  by  :.  sen- 
tence with  no  nominative  case  in  it.  and 
Hie  Addisonian  form  is  good,  elegant, 
classical  English.  All  the  Roman  au- 
thors are  full  of  examples:  and.  unless 
my  memory  fails  me,  the  very  lirsl 
Latin  line  cited  as  -mid  syntax  in  Hie 
old  Eton  grammar  is  : 

Ingeuuas  didicisse  Bdeliter  artes 
Eniollit  mores,  nee  sinit  ess.'  feros. 

Try  your  nineteenth  century  grammar 

ou  this — it  is  a  fair  test  :  -'Factum  dis- 
cendi  ingenuas  artes  emollit  mores."" 
Why  is  this  so  glaringly  ridiculous  in 
Latin,  yet  current  in  English?  Simply 
because  bad  English  is  so  common,  and 
bad  Latin  never  was. 

"To  die  is  landing  ou  some  distant  shore." 

This  line  of  Garth's  turned  into  nine- 
teenth-century English  would  be,  "  The 
fact  of  dying  is  identical  with  landing  on 
some  distant  shore 


If  I  could  scourge  that  imbecile  phrase, 
■•  the  fact  of."  out  of  England,  I  should 
lie  no  slight  benefactor  to  our  mother- 
tongue.  1  may  return  one  day  to  the 
other  vices  of  English  1  have  indicated 
above.  At  presenl  1  will  simply  remark 
that  what  1  call  "Doubles,"  the  writers 
..f  the  new  English  call  "cases  <>f  mis- 

TAKEN      IDENTITY."        Ph03DUS  !       what     a 

mouthful  !     This  is  a  happj  combination 
of  the  currenl  vices. 

1 .  Here  is  a  term  dragged  oul  of  philos- 
ophy i..  do  vulgar  work. 

','.    It   is   wedded   to   an    adjective,  which 

can  not   coexist  with  it.     You  may  mis- 
take a    man    for  A,  or  you   may   identify 

him    with   A.      But    yon  cannol    do  both; 
for   if  you    mistake,  you   do   not    identify, 
and  if  you  identify,  you  do  not  mistake. 
::.    Here  are  ten    syllables   set    In   do   the 

two.  Now  in  every  other  art  and 
science  economy  of  time  and  space  is  the 
irreat  object  :  only  the  English  of  the  day 
aims  at  parvum  in  multo.  But.  thank- 
Heaven,  good  ..Id  •-  Double  "  is  not  dead 
yet,  though  poisoned  with  exotics  and 
smothered  under  polysyllables. 

There  are  always  many  persons  on  the 
;  obe  who  seem  like  other  persons 
in  feature  when  the  two  are  not  confront- 
ed :  but.  setting  aside  twins,  it  is  rare 
that  out  of  the  world's  vast  population 
any  two  cross  each  other "s  path  so  like 
one  another  as  to  bear  comparison. 
Where  comparison  is  impossible,  the 
chances  are  that  the  word  ■•  Double  "is 
applied  without  reason.  Sham  Doubles 
are  prodigiously  common.  My  note-books 
are  full  of  them.  Take  two  examples  out 
of  many.  Two  women  examine  a  corpse 
carefully,  and  each  claims  it  as  her  hus- 
band. It  is  interred,  and  by  and  by  both 
husbands  walk  into  their  wives'  houses 
alive  and — need  I  say — impenitent.  A 
wife  has  a  man  summoned  for  deserting 


DOUBLES. 


179 


her.  Another  woman  identifies  him  in 
the  police  court  as  her  truant  husband. 
This  looks  ugly,  and  the  man  is  detained. 
Two  more  wives  come  in  and  swear  to 
him.  A  pleasing1  excitement  pervades  the 
district.  Our  lady  novelists  had.  kept  to 
the  trite  path  of  bigamy ;  but  truth,  more 
fertile,  was  going-  to  indulge  us  with  a 
quadrigamy.  Alas  !  the  quadrigamist 
brought  indisputable  evidence  that  he 
had  been  a  public  officer  in  India  at  the 
date  of  all  the  four  marriages,  and  had 
never  known  one  of  these  four  injured  fe- 
males, with  the  infallible  eyes  cant  assigns 
to  that  sex. 

Sometimes  the  sham  Double  passes  cur- 
rent by  beguiling  the  ears  in  a  matter 
where  the  eyes,  if  left  to  themselves, 
would  not  have  been  deceived.  The  most 
remarkable  cases  on  record  of  this  are 
the  false  Martin  Guerre  and  the  sham 
Tichborne.  A  short  comparison  of  these 
two  cases  may  serve  to  clear  the  way  to 
my  story. 

Fifteenth  century — Martin  Guerre,  a 
small  peasant  proprietor  in  the  south  of 
France,  and  a  newly  married  man.  left 
his  wife  and  went  soldiering,  and  never 
sent  her  a  line  in  eight  years.  Then  came 
a  man  who,  like  Martin,  had  a  mole  on 
his  cheek-bone  and  similar  features,  only 
he  had  a  long  beard  and  mustache.  He 
said  things  to  the  wife  and  sister  of  Mar- 
tin Guerre  which  no  stranger  could  have 
said,  and,  indeed,  reminded  the  wife  of 
some  remark  she  had  made  to  him  in  the 
privacy  of  their  wedding  night.  He  took 
his  place  as  her  husband,  and  she  had 
children  by  him.  But  her  uncle  had  al- 
ways doubted,  and  when  the  children 
came  to  divert  the  inheritance  from  his 
own  offspring,  he  took  action  and  accused 
the  newcomer  of  fraud,  it  came  to  trial ; 
there  were  a  prodigious  number  of  respect- 
able witnesses  on  either  side;  but  the 
accused  was  about  to  carry  it,  when 
stump — stump — stump — came  an  ominous 
wooden  leg  into  the  court,  and  there  stood 
the  real  Martin  Guerre,  crippled  in  the 
wars.  The  supposed  likeness  disappeared, 
all  but  the  mole,  and  the  truth  was  re- 
vealed. The  two  Martins  had  been 
soldiers,  and  drunk  together  in  Flanders. 


and  Martin  had  told  his  knavish  friend  a 
number  of  little  things.  With  these  the 
impostor  had  come  and  beguiled  tin.'  ears, 
and  so  prejudiced  the  eyes.  French  law 
was  always  severe.  They  hanged  him  in 
front  of  the  real  man's  door. 

Orton"s  case  had  the  same  feature. 
His  witnesses  saw  by  the  ear.  He  began 
by  pumping  a  woman  who  wanted  to  be 
deceived,  and  from  her  and  one  or  two 
more  he  obtained  information,  with  which 
he  dealt  adroitly,  and  so  made  the  long 
ears  of  weak  people  prejudice  their  eyes. 
As  for  his  supposed  likeness  to  Tichborne, 
that  went  not  on  clean  observation,  but 
on  wild  calculation.  ••  If  Martin  Guerre, 
whom  you  knew  beardless,  had  grown  a 
long  beard,  don't  you  think  he  would  be 
Like  this?  " 

"Yes,  I  do;  for  there's  his  mole,  and 
lie  knew  things  none  but  Martin  Guerre 
could." 

"  If  Roger  Tichborne,  whom  you  knew 
as  thin  as  a  lath,  had  become  as  fat  as  a 
porpoise,  don't  you  think  he  would  be 
like  this  man  ?  " 

••  Yes,  I  do ;  for  his  eyes  twitch  like 
Roger"s,  and  he  knows  some  things  Roger 
knew." 

Eleven  independent  coincidences  prove 
the  claimant  to  be  Arthur  Orton  ;  and 
three  such  coincidences  have  never  failed 
to  hang  a  man  accused  of  murder.  But 
that  does  not  affect  the  question  as  to 
whether  he  was  like  Tichborne.  There 
is,  however,  no  reason  whatever  to  be- 
lieve that  he  was  a  bit  like  him.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  anjr 
man  to  divine  how  a  very  lean  man  would 
look  were  he  to  turn  \^vy  fat  in  the  face ; 
and.  in  the  next  place,  the  fat  was  granted 
contrary  to  experience :  for  it  is  only  a 
plump  young  man  who  gets  fat  at  thirty  ; 
a  lean  man  at  twenty-one  is  never  a  por- 
poise till  turned  forty.  To  conclude,  this 
is  no  case  of  Doubles,  but  the  shallowest 
imposture  recorded  in  all  history :  and 
the  fools  who  took  a  fat,  living  snob, 
with  a  will  of  iron,  for  a  lean,  dead  aris- 
tocrat, with  a  will  of  wax,  have  only  to 
thank  their  long  ears  for  it;  no  down- 
right delusive  appearance  ever  met  their 
eyes. 


180 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READL. 


A  much  nearer  approach  to  a  Double 
occurred  almost  under  my  eyes. 

A  certain  laughter-loving'  dame,  the 
delight  of  all  who  knew  her.  vanished 
suddenly  from  her  father's  house,  where 
she  was  visiting.  Maternal  tenderness 
took  the  alarm,  emissaries  searched  the 
town  north,  south,  east  and  west,  and  a 
young  lady  was  found  drowned,  and  im- 
mediately recognized  as  my  sprightly 
friend.  Her  father  came  and  recognized 
her  too.  In  his  anguish  he  asked  leave 
to  pray  with  her  alone;  and  it  was  only 
in  the  act  of  prayer  thai  his  eye  fell  upon 
some  small  thing  that  caused  a  doubt: 
but  examining  her  hair  and  forehead 
more  narrowly,  he  tumid  the  drowned 
girl   was  inn   his  child. 

As  I'm-  her,  poor  girl,  she  was  young, 
and  had  dashed  off  to  Brighton,  in  very 
good  company,  and,  Like  the  rest  of  her 
prodigious  sex.  had  grudged  a  shilling 
for  a  telegram,  though  she  would  have 
given  all  she  had  in  the  world  rather 
than  cause  her.  parents  so  -en,, us  an 
alarm. 

Even  in  this  case  calculal ion  enters  : 
the  drowned  girl,  when  alive,  may  not 
have  looked  so  like  my  laughter-loving 
friend.  Still,  we  musl  allow  them  Doubles, 
or  very  near  it 

Having  t  hus  narrowed  I  he  subject .  1 
will  now  give  the  reader  the  mos1 
curious  case  of  Doubles  my  reading — 
though  somewhat  rich  in  such  matters — 
furnishes. 

The  great  Moliere  married  Ajrmande 
Bejart,  a  sprightly  actres 
pany.  She  was  a  fascinating  coquette, 
and  gave  him  many  a  sore  heart.  But 
the  public  profits  by  a  poet's  torments: 
wound  him.  he  bleeds,  not  ephemera] 
blood,  but  immortal  ichor — thoughts  thai 
breathe,  and  words  that  burn,  and  char- 
acters that  are  types  more  enduring  than 
brass.  The  great  master  has  given  us.  in 
a  famous  dialogue,  the  defects  and  charms 
of  the  woman  lie  had  the  misfortune  to 
love.  This  passage  in  which  a  disinterest- 
ed speaker  runs  her  down  and  a  lover  de- 
fends her.  is  charming  :  and  the  inter- 
locutors are  really  the  great  observer's 
judgment  and    his    heart.     The    contest 


ends,  as  might  be  expected,  in  the  vic- 
tory of  the  heart. 

Covielle,  alias  Moliere's  judgment: 
"  But  you  must  own  she  is  the  most 
capricious  creature  upon  earth." 

Cleonte,  alias  Moliere's  heart :  "  Oui, 
elle  est  capricieuse,  j'en  demeure  d'ac- 
cord  ;  mais  tout  sied  bien  aux  belles ;  on 
sontfre  tout  des  belles." — Le  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme,  Act  III.,  Scene  IX. 

But  Armande  Bejart  entered  more 
deeply  into  Moliere's  mind,  and  hut  for 
her  the  immortal  Celinioiu — a  character 
it  will  take  the  world  two  hundred  years 
more  to  estimate  at  its  full  value — would 
ne\  er  ha\  e  seen  i  he  light .  <  !&limene  is  a 
horn  coquette,  bul  with  a  world  of  good 
sense  and  been  wit,  and  not  a  bad  heart, 
but  an  untruthful — a  pernicious  woman, 
not  a  had  one.  She  has  an  estimable 
lover,  and  she  esteems  hmt:  hut  she  can- 
!i"!  do  without  two  butterfly  admirers, 
whom  she  fascinates  ami  deceives.  They 
detect  her,  and  expose  her  insolently, 
She  treats  them  with  calm  contempt. 
(  )nly  to  the  wort  liy  man  she  has  slighted 
she  bangs  her  head  with  gentle  and  evi  a 
pathetic    penitence.      She   oilers   to  marry 

him  ;  hut  when  he  makes  a  condition 
that  would  render  infidelity  impossible, 
lirage  fails,  ami  she  declines.  yr\ 
not  vulgarly.  Tins  true  woman,  with  all 
her  suppleness,  ingenuity,  and  marvelous 
pow.a-s  of  fence,  whether  she  has  to  parry 
the  just  remonstrances  of  her  worthy 
lover,  or  soot  he  the  vanity  of  her  bu1  terfly 
dupes,  or  pass  a  polished  rapier  through 
the  bodj  of  a  female  friend  who  co 
her  wiih  hypocrisy  and  envenomed  bland- 
ishments, is  Armande  Bejarl .  Thai  is  on 
reason  why  I  give  a  niche  in  my  collec- 
tion to  a  strange  adventure  that  befell 
her  after  the  great  heart  she  so  played 
with  had  ceased  to  beat,  and  the  great 
head  that  created  Celimene  had  ceased  to 
ache.  The  widow  Moliere,  after  her  hus- 
band'- death,  carried  on  her  gallantries 
with  greater  freedom,  but  in  an  inde- 
pendent spirit,  for  she  remained  on  the 
stage,  a  public  favorite  :  and  her  lovers, 
though  not  restricted  as  to  number,  must 
please  her  eye.  She  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  accessible  to  mere  ignoble  in- 


DOUBLES. 


181 


terests.  Monsieur  Lescot,  a  person  of 
some  importance,  President  of  the  Par- 
liament of  Grenoble,  saw  her  repeatedly 
on  the  stage,  and  was  deeply  smitten  with 
her.  He  had  heard  it  whispered  that  she 
was  not  quire  a  vestal,  and  he  resolved  to 
gratify  Ins  fancy  if  he  could.  In  those 
days  the  stage  at  night  was  a  promenade 
open  to  any  gentleman  of  fashion  ;  but 
President  Lescot  did  not  care  to  push  in 
among  the  crowd  of  beaux  and  actors,  so 
he  consulted  a  lady  who  had  been  useful 
to  many  distressed  gentlemen  in  similar 
cases.  This  Madame  Ledoux  ba'd  a  very 
large  acquaintance  with  persons  of  both 
sexes  ;  and  such  was  her  benevolence, 
that  she  would  take  some  pains,  and  even 
exert  some  ingenuity,  to  sweep  obstacles 
out  of  the  path  of  love  and  bring  agreeable 
people  together.  She  undertook  to  sound 
Mademoiselle  Moliere,  as  the  gay  widow 
was  called,  and.  if  possible,  to  obtain 
Monsieur  Lescot  an  interview. 

After  some  days  she  told  Lescot  that 
the  lady  would  go  so  far  as  to  pay  her 
a  visit  at  a  certain  time,  and  he  could 
take  this  opportunity  of  dropping  in  and 
paying  his  addresses. 

He  came,  and  found  a  young  lady  whose 
quiet  appearance  rather  surprised  him. 
La  Moliere  on  the  stage  was  celebrated 
for  the  magnificence  of  her  costumes  :  but 
here  she  was  dressed  with  singular  mod- 
esty. He  had  a  delightful  conversation 
with  her,  and  one  that  rather  surprised 
him.  She  was  bitter  against  the  theater, 
its  annoyances  and  mortifications,  and 
confessed  she  felt  not  altogether  unwill- 
ing to  make  a  respectable  acquaintance 
who  had   nothing  to  do  with  it. 

In  the  next  interview  Lescot  was  urgent 
and  the  lady  coy:  nevertheless,  she  held 
out  hopes,  provided  he  would  submit 
to  certain  positive  conditions.  Lescot 
agreed,  and  expected  that  a  settlement 
of  some  kind   would  be  required. 

Nothing  of  the  sort.  What  she  de- 
manded, and  upon  his  word  of  honor, 
was  that  he  would  never  come  after  her 
to  the  theater,  nor.  indeed,  speak  to  her 
in  public,  but  onty  at  the  house  of  their 
mutual  friend,  Madame  Ledoux.  The 
condition   was  curious    but    not    sordid. 


President  Lescot  accepted  it,  and  very 
tender  relations  ensued.  Lescot  was  in 
paradise,  and  Madame  Ledoux  took  ad- 
vantage of  that  to  bleed  him  very  freely  : 
but  his  inamorata  herself  showed  no  such 
spirit.  She  threw  out  no  hints  of  the 
kind,  and  the  most  valuable  present  she 
accepted  from  him  was  a  gold  necklace 
he  bought  for  her  on  the  Quai  des  Or- 
fevres.  She  assured  him,  too.  that  the 
intrig-ues  ascribed  to  her  were  utterly 
false,  and  that  what  most  attracted  her 
in  him  was  his  being  in  every  way  unlike 
her  theatrical  comrades — a  man  of  posi- 
tion and  a  friend  apart,  with  whom  she 
could  forget  the  turmoil  of  her  daily  ex- 
istence and  the  stale  compliments  of  the 
coxcombs  who  throng  the  theater. 

At  this  time  the  work  of  Thomas  Cor- 
neille,  nephew  of  the  great  dramatist, 
had  a  vogue  which  has  now  entirely  de- 
serted them.  His  "  Circe  "  was  produced. 
and  Mademoiselle  Moliere  played  the 
leading  part  and  astonished  the  town  by 
the  splendor  and  extravagance  of  her 
dresses.  Lescot  saw  her  from  his  box 
and  admired  her.  and  applauded  her 
furiously,  and  with  raptures  of  exulta- 
tion, to  think  that  this  brilliant  creature 
belonged  to  him  in  secret,  ami  came  to 
him  dressed  like  a  nun.  But  this  new 
eclat  set  tongues  talking,  and  Lescot 
listened  and  inquired.  He  learned  on 
good  authority  that  La  Moliere  had  two 
lovers — one  a  man  of  fortune,  M.  Du 
Boutay,  and  another  an  actor,  called 
Guerin,  whose  affections  she  had  stolen 
from  an  actress  of  the  same  company. 
Item — that  Du  Boulay  had  offered  her 
marriage,  but  finding  her  incapable  of 
fidelity,  had  retired,  and  at  present  she 
was  on  discreditable  terms  with  the 
actor  in  quest  ion. 

Lescot,  who  was  now  tenderly  attach© 
to  his  fascinating  visitor,  put  her  on  hei 
defense,  addressed  the  bitterest  re- 
proaches to  her.  and  lamented  his  own 
misfortune  in  having  listened  to  her  per- 
fidious tongue,  and  bestowed  a  constant 
heart  upon  a  double-faced  coquette.  She 
seemed  surprised  and  alarmed  :  but  re- 
covering herself,  used  all  her  address  to 
calm  him.     She  shed  many  tears,  and  de- 


182 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    REALji. 


clared  she  loved  no  one  but  him,  and  had 
kept  him  out  of  the  theater  for  this  very 
reason — that  it  was,  and  always  had 
been,  a  temple  of  lies  and  odious  calum- 
nies. Lescot  was  half  appeased,  but  his 
jealousy  being  excited,  demanded  more 
frequent  interviews.  She  consented 
readily,  made  a  solemn  appointment  for 
next  day.  and  took  good  care  not  to 
come. 

This  breach  of  faith  revived  all  Lea  ol  's 
jealousy,  and  after  waiting  for  her,  and 
and  storming  for  t  wo  hours,  he 
could  bear  his  jealous  doubts  and  fears 
ger,  lint  broke  bis  word  and  went 
straighl  to  the  theater.  As  any  gentle- 
man could  sit  on  the  stage  during  the 
performance,  President  Lescol  claimed 
that  right,  and  sat  down  upon  a  stool 
during  the  performance  of  "Circe."  In 
this  situation,  being  only  one  of  many 
gentlemen    there,    and    under    the     public 

eye,  lie  managed  to  restrain  bimself, 
though  greatly  agitated,  and  at  firs! 
contented  himself  with  watching  to  see 
i  rl  at  the  sight  of  him.  She  did 
no1  seem  to  notice  him,  however;  t<>  he 
sure,  she  was  warm  m  her  part.  At  hist 
it  so  happened  thai  she  walked  past  him 
wiih  that  grand  reposeful  slowness  which 
is,  and  always  was.  one  of  :i  graceful 
actress's  most  majestic  charms.  lie 
seized  that  opportunity.  "You  are 
more  beautiful  than  ever,"  he  said. 
quite  audibly;  "and  if  1  was  no:  in 
love  wiih  you  already.  I  should  be 
now." 

Whether  La  Moliere  was  warm  in  her 
part  and  did  no1  hear,  or  was  used  to 
sides,  she  paid  no  attention  what- 
ever. 

That  piqued  the  distinguished  member 
of  Parliament,  and  he  sat  sullen  till  the 
play  ended.  Then  he  was  on  the  alert, 
and  followed  La  Moliere  so  sharply  that 
he  entered  her  dressing-room  at  her 
heels.  Her  maid  requested  him  to  leave. 
He  stood  firm,  and  requested  the  maid  to 
retire,  as  he  had  something  particular 
to  say  to  mademoiselle.  Mademoiselle 
wanted  to  remove  the  glorious  but 
heavy  trapping's  of  tragedy,  so  she. 
said,   rather  sharp1'--  "Say  it,  then.  sir. 


I  do  not  think  there  can  be  anj-  secrets 
between  you  and  me." 

■•Xvvy  well,  madame,"  said  Lescot, 
bitterly;  "then  what  I  have  to  say  is 
that  your  conduct  is  unjustifiable." 

"  What  cause  of  displeasure  have  I 
given  you  F  " 

"You  made  an  appointment  with  me; 
I  keep  il.  you  break  it  I  come  here. 
disheartened  and  unhappy,  to  learn  the 
reason,  and  you  receive  me  like  a  crimi- 
nal." 

"The  man  is  mad,"  said  La  Moliere, 
and  eyed  him  with  a  look  of  haughty  dis- 
dain  that  would  have  crushed  him  had 
less  sure  right  was  on  his  side. 
As  it  was.  though  il  staggered  him.  il 
provoked  him  more.  He  confronted  her 
with  equal  hauteur,  ami  cried  out.  ••  Yom 
had  better  say  you  do  not  know  me." 

i  hallenged,  and  being  aware  she 
knew  a  great  many  gentlemen,  she 
looked  at  him  hard  and  full,  not  to 
make  a  mistake,  then  she  said,  "I  don't 
oven  know  your  name." 

LeSCOl  put  his  hand  to  his  heart,  and 
was  wonndeo  to  the  (piiek.  "  What  !  " 
he  cried,  "  after  all  t  hat  has  passed  be- 
tween us  !  Why.  you  must  lie  the  basest 
id'  God's  creatures  to  use  me  so  !  " 

••  Ah  '  i  Moliere.    "  Jeannette, 

call  some  people  to  turn  this  man 
i  he  plai 

"By     all     means,"    cried     the     other. 

ill   Paris    to    hear   me   give   this 

woman  her  i me  character  before  1  leave 

"Ruffian!  you  shall  smart  for  this,  in- 
solence," said  La  Moliere.  -rinding  her 
white  teeth. 

By  tli  ■  o  or  three  actors  and 

a  dozen  actresses  had  come  running 
and  half  dressed.  The  disputants 
French,  both  spoke  at  once,  and  at  the 
top  ol'  1  hen-  voices  :  La  Moliere  declaring 
this  ruffian  a  perfect  stranger  to  her,  who 
had  burst  into  her  dressing-room,  and 
outraged  her  with  the  grossest  calum- 
nies, the  very  meaning  of  which  was  an 
enigma  to  her,  and  Lescot  relating  all 
the  particulars  of  his  secret  intrigue  with 
her.  Detail  convinces,  and  La  Moliere 
had  the  mortification  to  see  by  the  snig- 


DOUBLES. 


183 


gering  of  the  actresses,  who  knew  her 
real  character,  that  they  believed  the 
gentleman  and  not  her. 

••Why,  look!'"  cried  he,  suddenly; 
"the  ungrateful  creature  lias  a  necklace 
on  I  gave  her.  1  bought  it  for  her  on  the 
Quai  des  Orfevres." 

This  was  too  much.  La  Moliere,  red  as 
fmy,  and  her  eyes  darting  flame,  sprang 
at  him  with  her  right  hand  lifted  to  give 
him  such  a  box  on  the  ear  as  she  had 
never  yet  administered  mi  the  stage;  but 
he  had  the  address  to  seize  her  wrist  with 
the  left  hand,  and  with  the  right  he  tore 
the  necklace  off  her  neck  and  dashed  it 
to  the  ground. 

Then  La  Moliere  called  the  guai'd  ;  and 
as  personal  violence  is  always  severely 
treated  in  France,  the  President  of  the 
Parliament  of  Grenoble  cooled  his  heels 
in  prison  that  night. 

Next  morning  the  President  Lescot 
was  released  on  bail,  after  a  short  hear- 
ing, in  which  he  declared  loudly  that  he 
hail  a  perfect  right  to  expose  a  courtesan,, 
whose  lover  he  was,  and  who  had  the  ef- 
frontery to  say  publicly  she  did  not  know 
him.  ••  That  right,"  said  he,  "  I  am  pre- 
pared to  maintain  in  any  tribunal."' 

He  held  the  same  Language  in  Society  ; 
and.  on  the  whole,  the  world  took  his 
part  in  the  matter. 

Supposing  the  allegation  to  he  false.  La 
Moliere  had  her  proper  remedy.  She  had 
only  to  proceed  against  Lescot  for  vio- 
lence and  slander. 

She  hesitated,  and  this  confirmed  the 
public  opinion.  It  spread  to  the  theatri- 
cal audiences,  and  the  favorite  actress 
began  to  be  received  with  sneers  and 
chuckles,  or  ominous  silence. 

She  was  alarmed,  and  went  to  an  old 
actress  called  Chateauneuf,  who  had  a 
long  head  and  had  often  advised  her  in 
matters  of   intrigue. 

La  Chateauneuf  said  the  case  was  plain. 
She  must  take  proceedings. 

"Nay,  but  I  dare  not,"  said  La  Moliere. 
••  They  will  search  into  my  whole  life." 

The  older  fox  laughed,  but  said,  "  Never 
mind  that,  child.  You  are  innocent,  for 
once ;  that  is  an  accident  you  must  put 
to  profit,  and  so  thro1'    a   doubt  on  your 


real  indiscretions.  Commence  proceed- 
ings at  once.  You  are  ruined  if  you  sub- 
mit." 

The  young  fox  listened  to  the  old  fox 
with  the  respect  due  to  our  seniors,  and 
laid  a  criminal  information  against  Les- 
cot. 

He  stood  firm  as  a  rock,  persisted  in 
his  statements,  and  brought  a  very  ugly 
witness,  the  goldsmith  from  the  Quai  des 
Orfevres.  This  trader  swore  to  La  Mo- 
liere's  necklace,  as  one  he  had  sold,  and 
to  her  as  the  lady  who  was  with  Lescot 
when  he  sold  it. 

This  evidence  was  fatal  to  the  accuser, 
both  in  the  court  and  with  the  public. 
But.  when  Lescot  went  after  Madame  Le- 
doux.  to  complete  his  defense,  she  was 
not  to  be  found.  He  let  this  out,  and 
that  he  had  relied  on  her.  The  accuser's 
agent  then  smelled  a  rat,  and  set  the  po- 
lice on  to  find  Ledoux. 

Meantime  La  Moliere  was  the  butt  of 
Paris. 

But  the  police  succeeded  in  finding  Le- 
doux, and  her  examination  put  a  new  face 
on  the  matter.  Ledoux  confessed  that 
Monsieur  Lescot,  being  madly  enamored 
of  Mademoiselle  Moliere,  had  asked  her 
assistance;  that  she,  not  caring  to  med- 
dle with  an  intrigue  of  that  kind,  had  in- 
troduced to  him  a  young  lady  who  per- 
fectly resembled  Mademoiselle  Moliere. 
This  young  lady,  she  said,  had  for  maid- 
en name  Marie  Simonnet,  but  called  her- 
self the  widow  of  a  Monsieur  Harve  de  la 
Tourelle.  a  gentleman  of  Brittany. 

On  this  hint,  the  accuser  searched  for 
the  young  lady  m  question.  They  soon 
found  traces  of  her,  and  that  she  was 
called  by  her  friends  "  La  Tourelle." 

La  Tourelle  had  disappeared.  "  And 
never  will  appear,  being  a  phantom," 
said  Lescot.  "  Was  ever  so  audacious 
a  figment  ?  as  if  one  woman  could  have 
the  face,  the  figure,  the  manners,  the 
cough,  and  the  necklace  of  another." 

Well,  the  officers  of  justice  caught  La 
Tourelle  in  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  and  were 
astonished  at  the  resemblance. 

She  was  confronted  with  Mademoiselle 
Moliere,  in  the  judge's  room,  in  presence 
of  Ledoux  and  the  President  Lescot. 


184 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    RE  A  Dm, 


The  ladies  faced  each  other  like  two 
young-  stags  ready  to  butt  each  other. 
The  injured  Moliere  folded  her  arms 
grandly,  and  cocked  her  nose  high,  and 
would  fain  have  locked  the  other  down 
as  a  criminal.  But  the  other  jade  saw- 
she  was  the  younger  of  the  two,  and 
wore  a  demur*'  air  of  defiant  com- 
placency. 

But,  setting  aside  fleeting  expression, 
they  were  literally  one  in  stature,  form, 
and  feature.  If  each  had  looked  into  a 
mirror,  she  would  have  seen  the  hussy 
thai   now  faced    her. 

Amazemenl  painted  itself  on  everj' 
fare:    most  of  all  on  Lescot's. 

Ledoux  persisted  in  her  confession  ; 
and  l >< >t  h  she  ami  La  Tourelle  were  im- 
prisoned,  lo  await    l  he  trial. 

Lescol  now-  found  himself  in  the  wrong 
box  :  and  it  became  \  erj  importanl  to 
him  tiiat  tiie  trial  should  never  conn-  oil'. 
Wit  h  t  his  view  he  exerted  all  Ins  influence 
to  bail  La  Tourelle,  meaning,  no  doubt, 
to  forfeil  ins  recognizances,  and  send  her 
out  of  the  country.  Bui  the  judges  would 
accepl   no  bail,  and   the  day  of  trial  was 

lixed. 

Then  Lescol  bribed  the  jailer;  and  he 
showed  La  Tourelle  how  to  make  her 
escape  in  a  very  ingenious  way.  that  had 
never  occurred  to  the  lady,  whose  genius, 
like  that  of  many  other  ladios.  was 
mainly  confined  to  matters  of  love  and 
intrigue. 

Lescol  senl  her  away  into  the  depths 
of  Dauphine,  ami  hoi-  absence  suspended 
that   trial. 

But  La  Moliere's  hlood  was  up.  and 
she  appealed  personally  to  men  in  power, 
and  used  all  her  charms  and  all  her 
arts. 

The  result  was  a  new  process,  under 
which  not  one  of  those  who  had  offended 
her  escaped. 

The  President  Lescot  was  condemned 
to  stand  at  the  bar.  and  read  a  paper  in 
presence  of  La  Moliere  and  four  witnesses, 
to  he  by  her  chosen. 

"I,  Frangois  Lescot,  admit  and  declare 
that  1,  by  recklessness  and  mistake,  have 
used  violence  against  Mademoiselle  Mo- 
liere,   here    present    and    slandered    her 


foully,  but  without  malice  of  heart,  hav- 
ing taken  her  for  another  person.*' 

He  was  also  fined  two  hundred  francs. 

By  the  same  judgment  the  women  Le- 
doux and  La  Tourelle  had  to  pay  a  line 
of  twenty  francs  each  to  the  king,  one 
hundred  francs  each  to  La  Moliere,  and 
to  be  whipped,  naked,  before  the  gate  of 
the  Chatelet,  and  also  before  the  house 
of  Mademoiselle  Moliere. 

Lescol  mane  tn>  amende  honorable, 
and  paid  his  fine.  Ledoux  paid  her  line, 
and  was  whipped  before  the  Chatelet  and 
before  La  Moliere's  windows:  but  La 
Tourelle  was  more  fortunate.  Nature 
has  her  freaks:  she  profiled  by  one  of 
i  hem.  Lescot,  who  had  now  compared 
in  many  ways  the  hussy  he  adored  with 
e  w  ho  had  personated  1km-.  was  as 
much  enamored  as  i  \er.  if  not  more  ; 
hut.  i.\  Jupiter,  it  was  no'  the  actress, 
hut   her   double,  he  was    now  in  love  with. 

lie  joined  her  in  Dauphine,  and  rewarded 
her  with   a    life-long   attachment,   which 

She    is   believed    lo    have   shared. 

La  Moliere.  as  her  foxy  adviser  had 
prophesied,     was     wonderfully      re-esiab- 

lished  m  character.  Men  said.  "  And, 
no  doubt,  she  was  always  calumniated." 
The  judgmenl  of  the  Chatelet  operated 
as  a  certificate  of  her  good  morals. 

The  goldsmith's  evidence  is  accounted 
for  thus.  There  were  no  jewels  to  the 
necklace,  a  number  of  gold  necklaces 
hail  been  made  on  one  pattern.  The 
goldsmith  swore  lo  La  Moliere's,  because 
he  saw  the  lady,  as  he  thought. 

While  the  affair  was  yet  warm  the 
fcragi-comedy  of  Thomas  Corneille,  called 
••  LTnconnu."  was  produced.  La  Moliere 
was  the  Connies-,,  and  in  the  play  a  gjpsy 
looked  at  her  hand,  and  spoke  these 
lines : 

"Cette  lig-ne,  qui  croisse  avec  celle  de  vie, 
Marque    pou    rvotre    gloire    un    moment    trc 

fatal  ; 
Sur  des  traits  ressemblants  on  en  parlera  mal, 
Et  vous  ;uirez  une  copie. 
NVn  prenez  pas  trop  de  chagrin  : 
Si  votre  araillarde  figure 
Contre  vous.  quelque  temps,  cause  un  facheux 
murniure, 
Un  tour  tie  oiUe  y  mettra  fin, 
Et  vous  rirez  d  l'aventui-e." 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


185 


The  public,  always  quick  to  fit  fiction 
to  reality,  seized  on  these  verses  at  once 
and  applied  them  to  the  recent  event, 
and  showed  their  sympathy  with  the 
actress  by  storms   of  applause. 

The  favorite,  her  popularity  embel- 
lished by  a  coup  de  maitre,  now  mar- 
ried her  actor — and  continued  her  gal- 
lantries. 

But  Celimene,  at  bottom,  lacked  neither 


judgment  nor  heart.  Hence  I  am  able  to 
conclude  with  a  good  and  touching  trait. 
On  the  anniversary  of  Moliere's  death, 
which  befell  in  winter,  she  always  col- 
lected the  poor  round  his  grave,  and  there 
bestowed  charity  on  them,  and  lighted 
great  fires  to  warm  them  as  they  ate  the 
food  she  bestowed  without  stint  upon 
them  at  that  great  master's  tomb. 
Poor  Celimene.     Adieu  ! 


THE   JILT.— A   YARN. 


PART  I. 

It  was  a  summer  afternoon  ;  the  sun 
shone  mellow  upon  the  south  sands  of 
Tenby ;  the  clear  blue  water  sparkled  to 
the  horizon,  and  each  ripple,  as  it  came 
ashore,  broke  into  diamonds.  This  am- 
ber sand,  broad,  bold,  and  smooth  as  the 
turf  at  Lord's — and.  indeed,  wickets  are 
often  pitched  on  it  — has  been  called 
•'Nature's  finest  promenade;  "  yet,  ow- 
ing to  the  attraction  of  a  flower  show,  it 
was  now  paraded  by  a  single  figure — a 
tall,  straight,  well-built  young  man, 
rather  ruddy,  but  tanned  and  bronzed 
by  weather  :  shaved  smooth  as  an  egg, 
and  his  collar,  his  tie,  and  all  his  dress 
very  neat  and  precise.  He  held  a  deck 
glass,  and  turned  every  ten  yards,  though 
he  had  a  mile  to  promenade.  These  signs 
denoted  a  good  seaman.  Yet  his  glass 
swept  the  land  more  than  the  water,  and 
that  is  not  like  a  sailor. 

This  incongruity,  however,  was  soon 
explained   and  justified. 

There  hove  in  sight  a  craft  as  attrac- 
tive to  every  true  tar.  from  an  admiral 
of  the  red  to  a  boatswain's  mate,  as  any 
cutter,  schooner,  brig,  bark,  or  ship;  and 
bore  down  on  him,  with  colors  flying  alow 
and  aloft. 

Lieutenant  Greaves  made  all  sail  tow- 


ard her,  for  it  was  Ellen  Ap  Rice,  the 
loveliest  girl  in  Wales. 

He  met  her  with  glowing  cheeks  and 
sparkling  eyes,  and  thanked  her  warmly 
for  coming.  "Indeed  you  may,"  said 
she :  "  when  I  promised,  I  forgot  the 
flower  show." 

"Dear  me,"  said  he,  "what  a  pity  I 
I  would  not  have  asked  you." 

"Oh,"  said  she,  "nevermind;  I  shall 
not  break  my  heart ;  but  it  seems  so  odd 
you  wanting  me  to  come  out  here,  when 
you  are  always  welcome  at  our  house, 
and  papa  so  fond  of  you." 

Lieutenant  Greaves  endeavored  to  ex- 
plain. "  Why,  you  see.  Miss  Ap  Rice, 
I'm  expecting  my  sailing  orders  down. 
and  before  I  go,  I  want —  And  the  sighl 
of  the  sea  gives  one  courage." 

"  Not  always :  it  gave  me  a  fit  of  ter- 
ror the  last  time  I  was  on  it." 

"  Ay,  but  you  are  not  a  sailor  ;  it  gives 
me  courage  to  say  more  than  I  dare  in 
your  own  house ;  you  so  beautiful,  so 
accomplished,  so  admired,  I  am  afraid 
you  will  never  consent  to  throw  yourself 
away  upon  a  seaman." 

Ellen  arched  her  brows.  "  What  are 
you  saying-,  Mr.  Greaves  ?  Why.  it  is 
known  all  over  Tenby  that  I  renounce 
the  military,  and  have  vowed  to  be  a 
sailor's  bride." 


186 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES  READE. 


By  this  it  seems  there  were  only  two 
learned  professions  recognized  by  the 
young-  ladies — at  Tenby. 

••  Ay,  ay."  said  Greaves,  "an  admiral, 
or  that  sort  of  thing'." 

"Well,"  said  the  young-  lady,  "of 
course  he  would  itare  to  he  an  admiral  — 
eventually.  Bui  they  cannot  be  burn  ad- 
mirals." At  this  stage  of  the  conver- 
sation she  preferred  oot  to  look  Lieu- 
tenant  Greaves,  R.  N..  in  the  face:  so 
sin-  wrote  pot-hooks  and  hangers  on  the 
sand,  with  her  parasol,  so  can-fully  thai 
you  would  have  sworn  they  must  be 
words  of  deepest  import . 

••  From  a  lieutenanl  loan  admiral  is  a 
long  way."  said  (ireaves.  sadly. 

■-  Yes."  said  she,  archly.  ••  it    is  as  far 

as  f r Tenby  to  Valparaiso,  where  my 

n  Dick  sailed  to  last  year— such 
a  handsome  fellow! — and  there's  Cape 
Horn  to  weather.  But  a  good  deal  de- 
pends (in  and  perseverance." 
In  uttering  this  last  remark  she  turned 
her  eye  askanl  a  moment,  and  a  flash 
shot  out  of  it  that  lighted  the  sailor's 
bonfire  in  a  moment .  ••  <  >h,  Miss  Ap 
Rice,  do  1  understand  you ?  Can  I  be  so 
fortunate?  If  courage,  perseverance, 
and  devotion  can  win  you.  no  other  man 
shall  ever —  You  must  have  seen  1  love 
you." 

■'It   would  be  odd    if   I    had    not."   said 
e.  blushing  a  little,  and  smiling  slyly. 
"  Why.  all  Tenby  has  seen  it.      You  don't 
hide  it  under  a  bus 

The  young  man  turned  red.  "Then  I 
deserve  a  round  dozen  at  the  gangway, 
for  being  so  indelicate." 

"  No,  no,"  said  the  young  Welsh- 
woman, generously.  "Why  do  I  prefer 
sailors:  Because  they  are  so  frank  and 
open  and  artless  and  brave.  Wiry,  Mr. 
Greaves,  don't  you  be  stupid  ;  your 
admiration  is  a  compliment  to  any  girl  : 
and  I  am  proud  of  it.  of  course."  said  she. 
gently. 

"God  bless  you  !  "  cried  the  young  man. 
"Now  I  wish  we  were  at  home,  that  I 
might  go  down  on  my  knees  to  you.  with- 
out making  you  the  town-talk.  Sweet, 
lovely,  darling  Ellen,  will  you  try  and 
love  me  ?  " 


"  Humph  !  If  I  had  not  a  great  esteem 
for  you.  should  1  be  here  ?  " 

"Ay,  but  1  am  asking  for  more,"  said 
Greaves:  "for  your  affection,  and  your 
promise  to  wait  for  me  till  I  am  more 
than  a  lieutenant.  I  dare  not  ask  for 
your  hand  till  I  am  a  post-captain  at 
least.  Ellen,  sweet  Ellen,  may  I  put  this 
on  your  dear  Anger  ?  " 

"  Why,  it  i^  a  ring.     No.     Whal  for?" 

"  Let  me  put  ii  on.  and  then  I'll  tell 
you." 

"  I  decare,  if  he  had  not  got  it  readj  on 
purpose  !  "  said  she.  laughing,  and  was  so 
extremely  amused  thai  she  quite  forgot 
' .  and  be  whipped  it  on  in  a  t  rice. 
It  was  no  sooner  on  than  she  pulled  a 
ace  ami  demanded  an  explanation 
of  this  singular  conduct. 

"It  means  we  are  engaged,"  said  he. 
joyfully,  and  flung  his  cap  into  the  air  a 
greal  heighl .  and  caught  it . 

•■  A  1  rap  !  "  screamed  she.  ■•  Take  it 
off  this  instant." 

"  Must   1  ?  "  said  he.  sadly. 

" ( >f  i     must ."       And     she 

crooked  her  finger  instead  of  straight- 
ening 

"  It    won't    com  id     lie.    with 

more  cunning  than  one  would    have   ex- 

"  No  more  it  will.  Weil.  1  must  have 
my  finger  amputated  the  moment  1  get 
home.      But  mind.  I  am  not  to  be  i 

art  Hires.      You   must  ask   papa." 
So    1   will,"  cried    Greaves,   joyfully. 
Then,  upon  reflection:  "He'll  wonder  at 
my  impudeii 

"  Oh.  no,"  said  Ellen,  demurely  ;  "you 
know  he  is  mayor  of  the  town,  and  has 
the  drollest  applications  made  to  him  at 
times.     Ha  !  ha  !  " 

"How  shall  I  ever  break  it  to  him?" 
said  Greaves.     "  A  lieutenant  !  " 

"  Why  a  lieutenant  is  a  gentleman : 
and  are  you  not  related  to  one  of  the  first 
lords  of  the  admiralty  ?  " 

"  Yes.  But  he  won't  put  me  over  the 
heads  of  my  betters.  All  that  sort  of 
thing  is  gone  by." 

"You  need  not  say  that.  Say  you  are 
cousin  to  the  first  lord,  and  then  stop. 
That  is  the  way  to  talk  to  a  mayor.     La, 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


187 


look  at  me,  telling  him  what  to  say — as  if 
I  cared.  There,  now — here  comes  that 
tittling-tattling  Mrs.  Dodsley,  and  her 
whole  brood  of  children  and  nurses.  She 
shan't  see  what  I  am  doing;"  and  Miss 
Ap  Rice  marched  swiftly  into  Merlin's 
Cave,  settled  her  skirts,  and  sab  down  on 
a  stone.  "  Oh  !  "  said  she,  with  no  great 
appearance  of  agitation,  "  what  a  goose 
I  must  be  !  This  is  the  last  place  I  ought 
to  have  come  to :  this  is  where  the 
lovers  interchange  their  vows — the  silly 
things." 

This  artless  speech — if  artless  it  was — 
brought  the  man  on  his  knees  to  her  with 
such  an  outburst  of  honest  passion  and 
eloquent  love  that  her  cooler  nature  was 
moved  as  it  had  never  been  before.  She 
was  half  frightened,  but  flattered  and 
touched  :  she  shed  a  tear  or  two,  and, 
though  she  drew  away  the  hand  he  was 
mumbling,  and  said  he  oughtn't,  and  he 
mustn't,  there  was  nothing  very  discour- 
aging in  her  way,  not  even  when  she 
stopped  "her  ears  and  said.  "  You  should 
say  all  this  to  papa."  As  if  one  could 
make  as  hot  love  to  the  mayor  in  his 
study  as  to  the  mayor's  daughter  in 
Merlin's  Cave  ! 

She  was  coy.  and  would  not  stay  long 
in  Merlin's  Cave  after  this,  but  said  noth- 
ing about  going  home  ;  so  they  emerged 
from  the  cave,  and  strolled  toward  Griltar 
Point. 

Suddenly  there  issued  from  the  sound, 
and  burst  upon  their  sight,  a  beautiful 
yacht.  150  tons  or  so.  cutter  -  rigged, 
bowling  along  before  the  wind  thirteen 
knots  an  hour,  sails  white  as  snow  and 
well  set,  hull  low  and  shapely,  wire  rig- 
ging so  slim  it  seemed  of  whip-cord  or 
mermaid's  hair. 

"Oh,  Arthur!"  cried  Ellen.  "What 
a  beauty  ! 

"And  so  she  is,"  said  he,  heartily, 
"Bless   you    for   calling    me   'Arthur.'" 

"It  slipped  out — by  mistake.  Come 
to  the  Castle  Hill.  I  must  see  her  come 
right  in — Arthur." 

Arthur  took  Ellen's  hand,  and  they 
hurried  to  the  Castle  Hill ;  and,  as  they 
went,  kept  turning  their  heads  to  watch 
the  yacht's  maneuvers  ;  for  a  sailor  never 


tires  of  observing  how  this  or  that  craft 
is  handled  ;  and  the  arrival  of  a  first- 
class  yacht  in  those  fair  but  uneventful 
waters  was  very  exciting  to  Ellen  Ap 
Rice. 

The  cutter  gave  St.  Catharine's  Rock 
a  wide  berth,  and  ran  out  well  to  the 
Woolhouse  Reef ;  then  hauled  up  and 
stood  on  the  port  tack,  heading  for  her 
anchorage;  but  an  eddy  wind  from  the 
North  Cliffs  caught  her,  and  she  broke 
off ;  so  she  stood  on  toward  Monkstone 
Point ;  then  came  about  with  her  berth 
well  under  her  lee.  mistress  of  the  situa- 
tion, as  landsmen  say. 

Arthur  kept  explaining-  her  maneuvers 
and  the  necessity  for  them,  and,  when 
she  came  about,  said  she  was  well-be- 
haved—  had  forereached  five  times  her 
length  —  and  was  smartly   handled   too. 

•■  Oh,  yes,"  said  Ellen  ;  "a  most  skill- 
ful captain,  evidently." 

This  was  too  hasty  a  conclusion  for  the 
sober  Greaves.  "  Wait  till  we  see  him 
in  a  cyclone,  with  all  his  canvas  on  that 
one  stick,  or  working-  off  a  lee  shore  in  a 
nor'wester.  But  he  can  handle  a  cutter 
in  fair  weather  and  fresh-water,  that  is 
certain." 

••Fresh-water!"  said  Ellen.  "How 
dare  you  ?  And  don't  mock  people.  I 
can't  get  enough  fresh-water  in  Tenby 
to  wash  my  hands." 

"  What,  do  you  want  them  whiter  than 
snow  ?  "  said  Greaves,  gloating  on  them 
undisguised. 

"  Arthur,  behave,  and  lend  me  the 
glass." 

"  There,  dearest." 

So  then  she  inspected  the  vessel,  and 
he  inspected  the  white  hand  that  held  the 
glass.  It  was  a  binocular  ;  for  even  sea- 
men nowadays  seldom  use  the  short  tele- 
scope of  other  days  ;  what  might  be  called 
a  very  powerful  opera-glass  has  taken  its 
place. 

"  Goodness  me  !  "  screamed  Ellen.  The 
construction  of  which  sentence  is  referred 
to  pedagogues. 

"What  is  the  matter  ?  " 

"The  captain  is  a  blackamoor. " 

Having  satisfied  herself  of  the  revolt- 
ing   fact    by    continued    inspection,    she 


188 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE 


handed  the  glass  to  Greaves.  "  See  if 
he  isn't,"  said  she. 

Greaves  looked  through  the  glass,  and 
took  leave  to  contradict  her.  "Blacka- 
moor !  not  he.  It  is  worse.  It  is  a  gen- 
tleman— that  ought  to  know  better — with 
a  beastly  black  beard  right  down  to  his 
waistband." 

"Oh,  Arthur,  how  horrid!  and  in  such 
a  pretty  ship  !  "' 

Greaves  smiled  indulgently  al  her  call- 
ing a  cutter  a  -  ship  '"  ;  bu1  her  blunders 
were  beaul  ies,  he  was  so  in  love  with  her. 

She  took  the  glass  again,  and  looked 
anil  talked  al  1  hie  same  1  noe.  •■  1  won- 
der what   lias  broughl   him  m  here  ?  " 

"  To  look  for  a   barbel-.   I  should   hope." 

'■  Arthur — suppose  we  were  to  send  out 
the  new  hair-dresser  i"  him?  Would  it 
no1  he  fun  ?     <>h  :  -oh  !— oh  !" 

"  What   is  it  now  ?  " 

••  A  boal  going  oul  to  aim.  Well.  I 
declare    -;>  boal  ful  of  dignitaries." 

•■  Mercy  on  us  !  " 

••  Yes  :  1  see  papa,  ami  1  see  I  lie  secre- 
tary of  the  Cambrian  Club,  and  another 
uvnt  leman— a  deputation.  1  do  believe. 
No — how  si  lipid  1  am  !  Why.  the  now 
arrival  musl  bi  Mr.  Laxton,  that  wrote 
and  told  papa  he  was  coming ;  lie  is  the 
son  of  an  old  friend,  a  ship-builder.  Papa 
is  sure  to  ask  him  to  dinner:  and  Z  ask 
you.     Do  come.     Ee  will  be  quite  a  lion." 

"  I  am  very  unfortunate.  Can'1  possi- 
bly come  to-day.  Gol  to  dine  on  board 
the  Warrior,  and  meel  the  prince;  name 
dou  ii  :  no  getting  oil." 

"Oh,  what  a  pitj  !  It  would  have 
oeen  so  nice;  you  and  Captain  Laxton 
together." 

"Captain  Laxton  ?     Who  is  he  ?  " 

•■  Why.  the  gentleman  wit  h  the  beard." 

"Hang it  all,  don't  call  him  a  captain." 

■■  Xot  when  he  has  a  ship  of  his  own  ?  " 

"  So  lias  a  collier,  and  the  master  of  a 
fishing  lugger.  Beside-,  these  swells  are 
only  fair  weather  skippers  ;  there's  al- 
ways a  sailing-master  aboard  their  ves- 
sels, that  takes  the  command  if  it  blows 
a  capful  of  wind.'' 

"  Indeed  !  then  I  despise  them.  But 
I  am  sorry  you  can't  come.  Arthur." 

"  Are  you  real! v.  love  ?  " 


"You  know  I  am." 

"Then  that  is  all  I  care  for.  A  dandy 
yachtsman  is  no  lion  to  me." 

"  We  ought  to  go  home  now."  said 
Ellen,  ■-or  we  shall  not  have  time  to 
dress." 

He  had  not  only  to  dress,  but  to  drive 
ten  miles  :  yet  he  went  with  her  to  her 
very  door.  He  put  the  time  to  profit; 
he  got  her  to  promise  everything  short 
of  marrying  him  without  papa's  consent, 
and.  as  she  was  her  father's  darling,  and 
in  reality  ruled  him.  not  he  her.  that  ob- 
stacle did  not  seem  insurmountable. 

Thai  evening  the  master  of  the  yacht 
dined  at  the  mayor's,  and  was  the  lion  of 
tl vening.  His  lace  was  rather  hand- 
some, what  one  could  see  of  it.  and  his 
beard  manly.  He  had  traveled  and 
cruised  for  years,  and  kept  his  eves  and 
ears  open:  had  a  greal  How  of  words, 
quite  a  turn  for  narrative,  a  ready  wit, 
a  seductive  voice,  ami  an  infectious  laugh. 

His  oiih  drawback  was  a  restless  eye. 
Even  that  lie  put  1o  a  good  use  by  being 
attentive  to  everybody  in  turn.  He  was 
evidently  charmed  with  Ellen  Ap  Rice, 
but  showed  it  in  a  well-bred  way,  and  old 
not  alarm  her.  She  was  a  lovely  girl, 
and    accustomed    to    he    openly  admired. 

Next  day  Arthur  called  on  her.  and 
she  told  him  everything,  and  seemed 
sorrj  to  have  had  any  pleasure  lie  had 
not  a  share  in.  "  He  made  himself  won- 
derful!/. ."  said  she.  •■  especial- 
ly to  papa  :  and,  oh  !  if  you  had  seen 
how  his  beard  wagged  when  he  laughed 
— ha!  ha!  And,  what  do  you  think? 
the  'Cambrians  '  have  lost  no  time  :  they 
have  shot  him  flying:  invited  him  to 
their  Bachelors'  Ball.  Ah.  Arthur,  the 
first  time  you  and  I  ever  danced  together 
was  at  that  ball,  a  year  ago.  I  wonder 
whether  you  remember  'i  Well,  he  asked 
me  for  the  first  round  dance." 

"  Confound  his  impudence  !  What  did 
you  say  ?  " 

•'I  said  'No'  :  I  was  engaged  to  the 
Royal  Navy." 

"  Dear  girl.  And  that  shut  him  up,  I 
hope." 

"Dear   me,    no.      He   is    too   good-hu- 


THE    JILT.— A     YARN. 


189 


ruored  to  be  cross  because  a  strange 
girl  was  bespoke  before  be  came ;  be 
just  laughed,  and  asked  might  he  fol- 
low in  its  wake." 

"  And  you  said  'Yes.'  " 

"No,  I  did  not,  now.  And  you  need 
not  look  so  cross,  for  there  would  have 
been  no  harm  if  I  had;  but  what  I  did 
say  was  not  'yes,'  but  'hum,'  and  I 
would  consult  my  memoranda.  Never 
you  mind  who  I  dance  with,  Mr.  Ar- 
thur ;  their  name  is  legion.  Wait  till 
you  catch  me  parading  the  sands  with 
the  creatures,  and  catching-  cold  with 
them  in  Merlin's  Cave.'' 

"My  own  love.  Come  on  the  sands 
now;  it  is  low  water,  and  a  glorious 
day." 

"  You  dear  goose  !  "  said  Ellen. 
"What,  ask  a  lady  out  when  it  is 
only  one  clear  day  before  a  ball  ?  Why, 
I  am  invisible  to  every  creature  but  you 
at  this  moment,  and  even  you  can  out- 
stay till  she  comes." 

"She  ?     Who  ?  " 

"Why,  the  dressmaker,  to  be  sure. 
Talk  of  the — dressmaker,  and  there's 
her  knock." 

"Must  I  go  this  moment?  " 

"  Oh  no.  Let  them  open  the  door  to 
her  first.  But  of  course  it  is  no  use  ,  our 
staying  while  she  is  here.  We  shall  be 
hours  and  hours  making  up  our  minds. 
Besides,  we  shall  be  upstairs,  trying  on 
things.  Arthur,  don't  look  so.  Why, 
the  ball  will  be  here  with  awful  rapidity  ; 
and  I'll  dance  with  you  three  times  out  of 
four:  I'll  dance  you  down  on  the  floor,- 
my  sailor  bold.  I  never  knew  a  Welsh 
girl  yet  couldn't  dance  an  Englishman 
into  a  cocked  hat :   now  that's  vulgar." 

"  Not  as  you  speak  it,  love.  Whatever 
comes  from  your  lips  is  Poetry.  I  wish 
you  could  dance  me  into  a  cocked  hat 
and  two  epaulets;  for  it  is  not  in  nature 
nor  reason  you  should  ever  marry  a  lieu- 
tenant." 

"It  will  be  his  fault  if  I  don't, 
then." 

The  door  was  rattled  discreetly,  and 
then  opened.  b\"  old  Dewar.  butler,  foot- 
man, and  chatterbox  of  the  establish- 
ment.    "The    dressmaker,    miss." 


"Well,   let  Agnes  take  her  upstairs." 

"  Yes,  miss." 

Greaves  thought  it  was  mere  selfish- 
ness to  stay  any  longer  now  ;  so  he  bade 
her  good-by. 

But  she  would  not  let  him  go  away  sad. 
She  tried  to  console  him.  "  Surely,"  said 
she,  "you  would  wish  me  to  look  well  in 
public.  It  is  the  ball  of  Tenby.  I  want 
you  to  be  proud  of  your  prize,  and  not 
find  you  have  captured  a  dowdy." 

The  woman  of  society  and  her  reasons 
failed  to  comfort  Lieutenant  Greaves  :  so 
then,  as  she  wTas  not  a  girl  to  accept  de- 
feat, she  tried  the  woman  of  nature  :  she 
came  nearer  him.  and  said,  earnestly, 
"Only  one  day.  Arthur!  Spare  me  the 
pain  of  seeing  yon  look  unhappy."  In 
saying  this,  very  tenderly,  she  laid  her 
hand  softly  on  his  arm,  and  turned  her 
lovely  face  and  two  beautiful  eyes  full  up 
to  him. 

A  sweet  inarticulate  sound  ensued,  and 
he  did  spare  her  the  pain  of  seeing  him 
look  unhappy ;  for  he  went  off  flushed 
and  with  very  sparkling  eyes. 

Surely  female  logic  has  been  under- 
rated up  to  the  date  of  this  writing. 

Greaves  went  away,  the  happiest  lieu- 
tenant in  the  Royal  Navy,  and  content  to 
kill  time  till  the  ball  day.  He  dined  at 
the  club  ;  smoked  a  cigar  on  the  Castle 
Hill,  and  entered  his  lod.2-in,<rs  just  as  the 
London  day  mail  was  delivered.  There 
was  a  paper  parallelogram  for  him.  with 
a  seal  as  big  as  the  face  of  a  chronometer. 
Order  from  the  Admiralty  to  join  the  Re- 
doubtable  at  Portsmouth, — for  disposal. 
Private  note,  by  the  secretary,  advising 
him  to  lose  no  time,  as  he  might  be  ap- 
pointed flag-lieutenant  to  the  Centaur, 
admiral's  ship  on  the  China  station,  from 
which  quick  promotion  was  sure  to  follow 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  the  service. 

Before  he  knew  Ellen  Ap  Rice  his  heart 
would  have  bounded  with  exultation  at 
this  bright  prospect ;  but  now  that  heart 
seemed  cut  in  two  ;  one  half  glowed  with 
ambition,  the  other  sickened  at  the  very 
thought  of  leaving  Ellen,  half  won.  But 
those  who  serve  the  nation  may  doubt 
and  fear,  but  have  parted  with  the  right 
to  vacillate.     There  was  but  one  thing  to 


190 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


do — start  for  London  by  the  fast  train 
next  morning:  at    10  A.  Ji. 

He  sent  a  hurried  note  to  Ellen,  by 
messenger,  telling-  her  what  had  occur- 
red, and  imploring  an  interview.  His 
messenger  brought  him  back  a  prompt 
reply.  Papa  was  going  to  Cardiff  in  the 
morning  on  business  ;  would  breakfast  at 
half-past  eight  precisely.  He  must  invite 
himself  to  breakfast  that  night,  and  come 
at  eight. 

He  did  so,  and  Ellen  came  down 
ly,  with  the  tear  in  her  eye.  They  com- 
forted each  "I  her,  agreed  to  look  on  it  as 
a  sure  step  to  a  creditable  union,  and, 
meantime,  lessen  the  separation  by  a 
quick  fire  of  letters.  He  would  write 
from  every  porl  be  landed  in,  and  would 
have  a  letter  for  every  homeward-bound 
ship  they  brought  to  out  at  sea,  and  she 
would  greet,  him  with  a  Letter  a1 
porl . 

When  they  had  duly  sealed  tins  com- 
pact .  I  he  nia\  or  came  in,  and  t  hat  kept 
t  hem  both  wit  bin  boun 

Bui    I  In  a\  es's    pi  OS]  &  I    ol 

mayor  showed  a 
and  said.  "Comeback 
to  Tenby   a    captain,  and    we   shall   all   be 
proud  of  you.  shall  we  not,  Nelly?'' 

When  a  fat  her  s  iys  SO  much  a 
to  a  young  fellow  who  has  been  openly 
courting  his  daughter,  it  hardly  bears 
t  vo  meanings;  and  Greaves  went  away. 
brave  and  buoyant,  and  the  sting  taken 
out  of  the  inopporl  une  par 

He  was  soon  at  Portsmouth,  and 
aboard  the   Redoubtable. 

He  was  appointed  flag-lieutenant  on 
board  the  Centaur,  then  lying  at  Spit- 
head,  bound  on  a  two  years*  voyage. 
Under  peculiar  circumstances  she 
touch  at  Lisbon,  Madeira,  and  the  Cape  : 
but  her  destination  was  Hong-Kong, 
where  she  was  to  lie  for  some  time  in 
command  of  the  station. 

Next  morning  a  letter  from  Ellen  ;  he 
kissed  it  devotedly  before  he  opened  it. 
After  some  kind  things,  that  were  balm 
to  him,  she  seemed  to  gravitate  toward 
that  great  event  in  a  girl's  life,  the  ball  : 
"I  did  so  miss  you.  dear  :  and  that  im- 
pudent Mr.  Laxton  had  the  first  dance — 


for  of  course  I  never  thought  of  putting 
anybody  in  your  place — but  he  would  not 
give  up  the  second  am-  more  for  that. 
He  said  I  had  promised.  Oh,  and  he 
asked  me  if  I  would  honor  his  yacht  with 
my  presence,  and  he  would  take  me  a 
cruise  round  Sunday  Island.  I  said. 
'No;  I  was  a  bad  sailor.*  'Oh,'  said 
he,  'we  will  wait  for  a  soldier's  wind  ? ' 
What,  is  a  •  soldier's  wind  !J  "  When 
I  would  not  consent,  he  got  papa  by 
himself,  and  papa  consented  directly 
for  both  of  us.  I  cannot  bear  such  im- 
pudent men,  that   will  not  take  a  '  no.' 

Arthur  wrote  back  very  affection ately, 
but  made  a  point  of  her  not  sailing  in 
Laxton's  yacht.  It  was  not  proper;  nor 
prudent.  The  wind  might  fall  :  the 
yachl  be  out  all  night:  and.  in  any  case, 
the  man  was  a  stranger,  of  whom  they 
knew  nothing,  but  that  his  appearance 
was  wild  and  disreputable,  and  that  he 
was  a  mere  cruiser  and  a  man  of  pleas- 
ure. He  hoped  his  Ellen  would  make  1  liis 
Lcriflce  to  his  feelings.     Tl 

QO]         i    i  nee. 

Ellen  replied  to  it  :  "  You  dear,  jealous 
goose,  did  you  think  I  would  go  on  board 
Ins  yachl  1  he  only  lady  ?  Of  course  there 
was  a  large  party;  and  you  should  nave 
seen  the  Miss  Frumps,  and  that  Agnes 
Marker,  how  they  thin:;-  themselves  at 
his  head  i  it  was  disgusting.  But  don't 
you  worry  about  the  man,  dear.  I  am 
sorry  I  told  you.  We  were  back  to  din- 
ner."" 

Then  the  fair  writer  went  off  to  other 
things:   bid  there  was  a  postscript  : 

ptaln  Laxton  has  called  to  bid 
good-by,  and  his  beautiful  yacht,  is  just 
sailing  oul  of  t be  roads." 

As  what  little  interest  there  is  in  this 
part  of  the  story  centers  in  Miss  A.p 
Rice's  letters.  I  will  just  say  that  Greaves 
had  one  from  her  at  Lisbon,  which  gave 
him  unmixed  pleasure.  It  was  Ion,";  and 
kind,  though  not  so  gay  as  usual.  As 
for  this  Laxton,  he  appeared  to  have 
faded  out  entirely,  for  she  never  men- 
tioned his  name. 

At  Madeira  Greaves  received  a  letter, 
shorter  and  more  sprightly.  In  a  post- 
script she  said  :   "  Who  do  you  think  has 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


lttl 


fallen  down  from  the  clouds  ?  That  Mr. 
Laxton,  without  his  yacht.  We  asked 
him  what  had  become  of  her.  '  Con- 
demned,' said  he  solemnly.  '  In  the  Le- 
vant, a  Greek  brig  outsailed  her ;  in  the 
Channel  here,  a  French  lugger  lay  nearer 
the  wind.  After  that,  no  more  cutters 
for  me.'  We  think  he  is  a  little  cracked* 
That  odious  Agnes  Barker  will  not  let 
him  alone.  I  never  saw  such  a  shameless 
flirt." 

The  ship  lay  eight  days  at  Madeira, 
and  on  the  seventh  day  he  received  an- 
other letter,  begging  him  to  come  home 
as  soon  as  possible,  for  she  was  subject 
to  downright  persecution  from  Captain 
Laxton;  and  her  father  was  much  too 
easy.  For  the  first  time  in  her  life  she 
realty  felt  the  need  of  a  protector. 

This  letter  set  Greaves  almost  wild.  She 
wanted  him  back  to  protect  her  now.  and 
he  bound  for  the  East,  and  could  not  hope 
to  see  her  for  two  years. 

Nothing  for  it  but  to  pace  the  deck  and 
rage  internally.  No  fresh  advices  pos- 
sible before  the  Cape.  He  couldn't  sleep, 
and  this  operated  curiously ;  he  passed 
for  a  supernaturally  vigilant  lieutenant. 

There  was  a  commander  on  board,  a 
sprig  of  nobility,  a  charming  fellow,  but 
rather  an  easy-going  officer  :  he  used  to 
wonder  at  Greaves,  and,  having  the  ad- 
miral's ear,  praised  him  for  a  model. 
"  The  beggar  never  sleeps  at  all,*'  said 
In'.     ••  I  think  he  will  kill  himself.'' 

"  He  will  be  the  only  one  of  ye,"  growl- 
ed the  admiral.  But  he  took  notice  of 
Greaves — all  the  more  that  a  lord  of  the 
Admiralty,  who  was  his  personal  friend, 
had  said  a  word  for  him  in  one  of  those 
meek  postscripts  which  mean  so  much 
when  written  by  the  hand  of  power. 

At  last  they  reached  the  Cape,  and 
dropped  anchor. 

The  mail-boat  came  out  with  letters. 

There  was  none  for  Greaves. 

No  letter  at  all !  The  deck  seemed  to 
rise  under  him,  and  he  had  to  hold  on  by 
the  forebraces ;  and  even  that  was  as 
much  as  he  could  do,  being  somewhat 
weakened  by  sleepless  nights.  Several 
officers  came  round  him,  and  the  ship's 
surgeon   applied   salts   and    brandy,    and 


he  recovered,  but  looked  very  wild.  Then 
the  surgeon  advised  him  to  go  ashore 
for  a  chauge.  Leave  was  granted  imme- 
diately, and  the  second  lieutenant  went 
with  him  good-naturedly  enough.  They 
made  inquiries,  and  found  another  mail 
was  due  in  two  days.  They  took  up 
their  quarters  at  a  hotel,  and  there 
Greaves  was  so  wretched,  and  his  com- 
panion so  sympathetic,  that  at  last  the 
tormented  lover  made  a  confidant  of  him. 

"Oh,  it  will  be  all  right,"  said  the 
other.  "Why  should  she  want  you 
home,  if  she  liked  that  lubber?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  poor  Greaves. 
"The  last  letter  was  not  like  her — such  a 
high-spirited  girl ;  and  it  looked  as  if  he 
was  getting  her  into  his  power.  If  he 
has,  all  the  worse  for  both  of  us  ;  for  the 
day  I  catch  him  I  shall  kill  him." 

Next  day  the  mail  came  in  ;  and  as 
Greaves  had  left  his  address  at  the  post- 
office,  a  letter  was  brought  him,  all 
wetted  and  swollen  with  rain,  the  boy 
having  carried  it  without  the  least  at- 
tempt to  protect  it  from  a  thick  drizzle 
that  enveloped  the  town  that  day. 

Greaves  tore  it  open.  It  was  fatally 
short.     This  is  every  syllable  of  it  : 

"Forget  one  unwortlry  of  you.  I  can 
resist  no  longer.  I  am  fascinated.  I  am 
his  slave,  and  must  follow  him  round  the 
world.     Pei'haps  he  will  revenge  you. 

"  Dear  Arthur,  I  did  not  mean  to  de- 
ceive. I  am  but  young  :  I  thought  I 
loved  you  as  you  deserve.  Pray,  pray 
forgive  me.  E." 

Suspense,  the  worst  of  all  our  tortures, 
was  over;  the  blow  had  fallen.  Arthur 
Greaves  was  a  man  again. 

"Yes,  I  forgive  you,  rny  poor  girl," 
he  groaned,  "But"  (with  sudden  fury) 
"  I'll  kill  him." 

He  told  his  friend  it  was  all  over,  and 
even  gave  him  the  letter.  "  It  is  not  her 
fault,"  he  sobbed.  "  The  fellow  has  cast 
a  spell  over  her.  No  more  about  it,  or  I 
should  soon  go  mad." 

And,  from  that  hour,  he  endured  in 
silence,  and  checked  all  return  to  the 
subject  very  sternly. 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READL. 


But  his  friend  talked,  and  told  the 
other  officers  how  Greaves  had  been 
jilted,  and  was  breaking-  his  heart:  and 
he  looked  so  ghastly  pale  that  altogether 
he  met  with  much  honest  sympathy.  The 
very  admiral  was  sorry,  in  his  way.  He 
had  met  turn  in  the  street,  looking  like  a 
ghost,  and  his  uniform  hanging  loose  on 
him,  his  stalwart  form  was  so  shrunk. 
"Confound    the   women!"  growled    the 

old   boy  to  his  favorite,  the  c nander. 

"There's  the  besl  officer  in  the  ship,  a 
first-class  mathematician,  an  able  navi- 
gator, a   good  seaman,    and    a    practical 

gunner,  laid  low  b\  Si young  bitch  nut 

worth  his  little  linger.  I'll  be  hound.*' 

Nexl  day  he  senl  for  the  young  man. 

••  Let  tenant    <  rrea\  es  !  " 

"Sir." 

"Here's  a  transport  going  home,  and 
nobody  in  command  her.  They  have 
come  to  me.  I  thought  (if  sending;  the 
second  lettenant;  it  would  have  been 
more  convenient  :  for.  by  Jove  !  sir,  when 
you  are  gone.  1  may  have  to  sail  the 
ship  myself.  However.  I  have  altered 
my  mind — .von  will  take  the  troops  to 
Plymouth." 

"  Yes.  admiral." 

■•Then  you'd  better  bake  a  fortnight 
ashore,  I'm-  your  health.  You  are  very 
ill.  sir." 

"  Thank  you.  admiral." 

"Come  oiii    to   Hong-Kong  how  you 

can.  You  can  apply  to  the  Admiralty 
for  your  expenses,  if  you  Haul:  it  is  any 
use." 

( Jreaves's  eye  flashed  and  his  pale  cheek 
colored. 

"Ay,  ay."  said  the  admiral,  "1  see 
these  instructions  are  not  so  disagreeable 
as  they  ought  to  be.  A  steam-tug-  and  a 
cargo  of  lobsters!  But  you  must  listen 
to  me  :  an  honest  sailor  like  you  is  no 
match  for  these  girls:  it  is  not  worth 
your  while  to  be  sick  or  sorry  for  any 
one  of  them.  There  !  there  !  send  your 
traps  aboard  the  tub,  and  clear  the  har- 
bor of  her  as  soon  as  you  can.  She  is 
under  your  orders,  sir." 

"God  bless  you,  admiral  !  "  sobbed 
Greaves,  and  retired  all  in  a  hurry, 
partly  to  hide  his  emotions,  and  partly 


because  it  is  not  usual,  in  the  service,  to 
bless  one's  superiors  to  their  faces.  It  is 
more  the  etiquette  to  curse  them  behind 
their  backs. 

Now  was  Greaves  a  new  man.  Light 
shone  in  Ins  eye,  vigor  returned  to  his 
limbs ;  this  most  unexpected  stroke  of 
good  fortune  put  another  face  on  things, 
lie  had  the  steamboat  coaled  and  vict- 
ualed with  unheard-of  expedition,  got 
the  troops  on  hoard,  and  steamed  away 
for  Plymouth. 

They  had  fair  weather,  and  bis  hopes 
rose.  After  all.  Ellen  could  hardly  have 
taken  any  irretrievable'  step.  She  had 
never  denied  his  claim  on  her;  a  good 
licking  bestowed  on  Laxton  might  break 
the  spell  and  cool  his  ardor  mlo  the  bar- 
gain. He  felt  sure  he  could  win  her  back 
somehow.  He  had  been  out  of  sight  when 
tins  fellow  succeeded  in  deluding  her. 
Ihii  now  he  should  get  fair  play. 

lie  landed  the  1  loops  at  Plymouth,  and 
made  his  report  :  I  hen  oil'  to  Tenby  at 
once.  He  wenl  straighl  to  the  mayor's 
house.      A  gill  opened  the  door. 

••  Miss  Ap  Rice  ?  " 

•'  She  don't  live  here.  sir.  now.  Lawk  ! 
ii  is  Captain  Greaves.  Come  in,  sir,  and 
I'll  send  Mi-.  Dewar." 

( i reaves  went  in.  full  of  misgivings,  and 
sai  dow  n  m  i  he  dining-room. 

Presently  Dewar  cam< — a  white-haired 
old  fellow,  who  had  been  at  sea  in  early 
life,  but  was  now- the  mayor's  factotum, 
and    allowed    himself   great    liberties. 

He  came  in.  open-mouthed.  "  Ah. 
Captain  Greaves,  it  is  a  bad  business. 
I'm  a'mosl  sorry  to  see  you  here.  Gone, 
sir,  gone,  and  we  shall  neversee  her  again. 
I'm  afraid." 

"  Gone  !  What  !  run  away — with  that 
scoundrel  ?  " 

■■  Well,  sir.  it  did  look  like  running 
away,  being  so  sudden.  But  it  was  a 
magnificent  wedding,  for  that  matter, 
and  they  left  in  a  special  steamer,  with 
a  gilt  starn,  and  the  flags  of  all  nations 
a-flying." 

"  "Married  ?  " 

"You  may  well  be  surprised,  sir.  But, 
for  as  sudden  as  it  was.  I  seen  it  a-coming. 
You  see,  sir.  he  was  always  at  her,  morn- 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


193 


ing,  noon,  and  night.  He'd  have  tii'ed 
out  a  saint,  leastways  a  female  one. 
Carriage  and  four  to  take  her  to  some 
blessed  old  ruin  or  other.  She  didn't  care 
for  the  ruin,  hut  she  couldn't  withstand 
the  four  horses,  which  they  are  seldom 
seen  in  Tenby.  Flowers  every  day ; 
Hindia  shawls ;  dimond  necklace ;  a 
wheedling  tongue ;  and  a  beard  like  a 
Christmas  fir.  I  blame  that  there  beard 
for  it.  Ye  see,  captain,  these  young  la- 
dies never  speaks  their  real  minds  about 
them  beards.  Lying  comes  natural  to 
them  ;  and  so,  to  flatter  a  clean,  respect- 
able body  like  you  or  me,  they  makes  pre- 
tend, and  calls  beards  ojious.  And  so 
they  are.  That  there  Laxton,  his  heard 
supped  my  soup  for  a  wager  agin  his 
belly  ;  and  with  him  chattering  so,  he'd 
forget  to  wipe  it  for  ever  so  long.  Sarved 
him  right  if  I'd  brought  him  a  basin  and 
a  towel  before  all  the  company.  But 
these  young  ladies,  they  don't  vally  that. 
What  they  looks  for  in  a  man  is  to  be  the 
hopposite  of  a  woman.  They  hates  and 
despises  their  own  sect.  So  what  they 
loves  in  a  man  is  hunblushing  himpu- 
dence  and  a  long  beard.  The  more  they 
complains  of  a  man's  brass,  the  more 
they  likes  it ;  and  as  for  a  beard,  they'd 
have  him  look  like  a  beast,  so  as  he  looked 
very  onlike  a  woman,  which  a  beard  it  is. 
But  if  they  once  fingers  one  of  them 
beards  it  is  all  up  with  'em.  That  is  how 
I  knew  what  was  coming  ;  for  one  day 
I  was  at  my  pantry  window,  a-cleaning 
my  silver,  when  miss  and  him  was  in  the 
little  garden  ;  seated  on  one  bench  they 
was,  and  not  fur  off  one  another  neither. 
He  was  a-reading  poetry  to  her,  and  his 
head  so  near  her  that  I'm  blest  if  his  tar- 
nation beard  wasn't  almost  in  her  lap. 
Her  eyes  was  turned  up  to  heaven  in  a 
kind  of  trance,  a-tasting  of  the  poetry  ; 
but  whiles  she  was  a-looking  up  to  heaven 
for  the  meaning  of  that  there  sing-song, 
blest  if  her  little  white  fingers  wasn't 
twisting  the  ends  of  that  there  beard 
into  little  ringlets,  without  seeming  to 
know  what  they  was  doing.  Soon  as  I 
saw  that,  I  said,  '  Here's  a  go.  It  is  all 
up  with  Captain  Greaves.  He  have 
limed  her,  this  here  cockney  sailor.'     For 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


if  ever  a  woman  plays  with  a  man's 
curls,  or  his  whiskers,  or  his  beard,  she 
is  netted  like  a  partridge.  It  is  a  sure 
sign.  So  should  we  be  if  the  women's 
hair  was  loose;  but  they  has  so  much 
mercy  as  to  tie  it  up  and  make  it  as  hugly 
as  they  can,  and  full  o'  pins,  and  that 
saves  many  a  man  from  being  netted  and 
caged  and  all.  So  soon  arter  that  she 
named  the  day." 

Greaves  sat  dead  silent  under  this  flow 
of  envenomed  twaddle,  like  a  spartan 
under  the  knife.  But  at  last  he  could 
bear  it  no  longer.  He  groaned  aloud, 
and  buried  his  contorted  face  in  his 
hands. 

"Confound  my  chattering  tongue!" 
said  honest  Dewar,  and  ran  to  the  side- 
board and  forced  a  glass  of  brandy  on 
him.  He  thanked  him,  and  drank  it,  and 
told  him  not  to  mind  him,  but  to  tell  him 
where  she  was  settled  with   the   fellow. 

"Settled,  sir?"  said  Dewar.  "No 
suck  luck.  She  writes  to  her  papa  every 
week,  but  it  is  always  from  some  fresh 
place.  '  Dewar,'  says  his  worship  to  me, 
'  I've  married  my  girl  to  the  Wandering 
Jew.'  Oh,  he  don't  hide  his  mind  from 
me.  He  tells  me  that  this  Laxton  have 
had  a  ship  built  in  the  north,  a  thunder- 
ing big  ship — for  he's  as  rich  as  Crosses — ■ 
and  he  have  launched  her  to  sail  round 
the  world.  My  fear  is  he  will  sail  her  to 
the  bottom  of  the  ocean." 

"Poor  Ellen!" 

"Captain,  captain,  don't  fret  your 
heart  out  for  her ;  she  is  all  right.  She 
loves  the  man,  and  she  loves  hexcite- 
ment ;  which  he  will  give  it  her.  She'd 
have  had  a  ball  here  every  week  if  she 
could ;  and  now  she  will  see  a  new  port 
every  week.  She  is  all  right.  Let  her 
go  her  own  road.  She  broke  her  troth  to 
do  it ;  and  we  don't  think  much,  in  Wales, 
of  girls  as  do  that,  be  they  gentle  or  be 
they  simple,  look  you." 

Greaves  looked  up,  and  said,  sternly, 
"Not  one  word  against  her  before  me. 
I  have  borne  all  I  can." 

Old  Dewar  wasn't  a  bit  offended.  "  Ah, 
you  are  a  man,  you  are,"  said  he.  Then, 
in  a  cordial  way,  "  Captain  Greaves,  sir, 
you  will  stay  with  us.  now  you  are  come." 

■7 


194 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


"Me  stay  here  !  " 

"  Ay ;  why  ndt  ?  Ye  mustn't  bear  spite 
against  the  old  man.  He  stood  out  for 
you  longer  than  I  ever  knowed  him  to 
stand  out  against  he?-.  But  she  could  al- 
ways talk  him  over  ;  she  could  talk  any- 
body over.  It  is  all  haccideut  my  stand- 
ing so  true  to  you.  It  wasn't  worth  her 
while  to  talk  old  Dewar  over  ;  1  hat  is  I  he 
reason.  Do  ye  stay,  now.  You'll  be  like 
a  son  to  the  old  man.,  look  you.  He  is 
sadly  changed  since  she  went — quite 
melancholy,  and  keeps  a-blaming  of  his- 
self  for  letting  her  be  master." 

"Dewar,"  said  the  young  man.  ••  T 
cannot.  The  sight  of  the  places 
I  walked  with  her,  and  loved  her.  and 
she  seemed  to  love  me — oh  no  ! — to  Lon- 
don by  the  firs'  train,  and  then  to  sea. 
Thank  God  forthesea!  The  sea  cannol 
change  into  lying  land.  My  heart  has 
been  broken  ashore.  Perhaps  it  may 
recover  in  a  few  years,  at  sen.  Give 
him  my  love,  Dewar,  and  God  bless 
you  ■'" 

He  almost  ran  out  of  the  house,  and 
fixed  In-   eyes  on  the   ground,  to  see  no 

iv  objects    imbittered  by  recollections 

of  happiness  fled.  He  made  his  was  tohis 
uncle  in  London,  reported  himself  to  the 
Admiralty,  and  asked  for  a  berth  in  the 
Brs1  ship  bound  to  China.  He  was  told, 
in  reply,  he  could  go  out  in  any  mi 
ship;  but  as  his  pay  would  not  be  inter- 
rupted, the  governmenl  could  not  be 
chargeable  for  his  expenses. 

In  spite  of  a  dizzy  headache,  he  went 
into  the  City  nexl  day  to  arrange  for 
his  voyage. 

But  at  night  he  was  taken  with  violent 
shivering,  and  before  morning  was  light- 
headed. 

A  doctor  was  sent  for  in  the  morning. 

Next  day  the  case  was  so  serious  that  a 
second  svas  called  in. 

The  case  declared  itself — gastric  fever 
and  jaundice. 

They  administered  medicines,  which,  as 
usual  in  these  cases,  did  the  stomach  a 
little  harm,  and  the  system  no  good. 

His  uncle  sent  for  a  third  physician  ;  a 
rough  but  very  able  man.  He  approved 
all  the  others  had  done — and  did  the  very 


reverse ;  ordered  him  a  milk  diet,  tepid 
aspersions,  frequent  change  of  bed  and 
linen,  and  no  medicine  at  all,  but  a  little 
bark  :  and  old  Scotch  whisky  in  modera- 
tion. 

"Tell  me  the  truth,"  said  his  sorrow- 
ful uncle. 

•'  I  always  do,"  said  the  doctor,  "  that 
is  why  they  call  me  a  brute.  Well,  sir, 
the  case  is  not  hopeless  yet.  But  I  will 
not  deceive  son:  I  fear  he  is  going  a 
longer  voyage  than  China." 

So  may  the  mind  destroy  the  body,  and 
the  Samson,  who  can  conquer  a  host,  be 
laid  low  by  a  woman. 


part  n. 

YOUTH,  a  good  constitution,  good 
nursing,  the  right  food  and  drink,  anil 
no  medicine,  saved  the  life  of  Arthur 
Greaves.  Hut  gastric  fever  and  jaun- 
dice are  terrible  foes  to  attack  a  man 
in  concert  :  they  left  him  as  unlike  the 
tanned  and  ruddy  seaman  of  our  lirsl 
scene,    as    the    wrecked    ship    battered 

againsl    the    shore    is   to    the    same     vessel 

■  breasted  I  be  wa,\  es  under  can- 
v;i\  His  hair  was  but  half  an  inch  long, 
his  grizzly  beard  t  svo  inches;  and  his 
sunken  cheeks  as  yellow  as  saffron. 
They  told  him  he  was  out  of  danger, 
and  offered  him  a  barber  to  shave  his 
chin — the  same  that  had  shaved  his  head 
a  fortnight  before. 

•■No."  said  the  convalescent:  "not 
such  a  fool." 

He  explained  to  his  uncle,  in  private: 
"I  have  lost  my  Ellen  for  want  of  a 
beard.  I  svon't  lose  another  that  way. 
if  I  ever  have  one." 

He  turned  his  now  benumbed  heart  to- 
ward his  profession,  and  pined  for  blue 
water.  His  physician  approved  :  and  so. 
though  still  sveakish  and  yellowish,  he 
shipped,    as    passenger,    in    the   PJwbe, 


THE   JILT— A    YARN. 


195 


bound  for  Bombay  and  China,  and  went 
on  board  at  Gravesend.  She  was  regis- 
tered nine  hundred  tons,  and  carried  out 
a  mixed  cargo  of  hardware  and  Manches- 
ter goods,  including  flaming  cottons  got 
up  only  for  the  East,  where  Englishmen 
admire  them  for  their  Oriental  color. 
She  was  well  manned  at  starting,  and 
ably  commanded  from  first  to  last  by 
Captain  Curtis  and  six  officers.  The 
first  mate,  Mr.  Lewis,  was  a  very  experi- 
enced seaman,  and  quite  a  friendship 
sprang  up  between  him  and  Flag-Lieuten- 
ant Greaves.  The  second  mate,  Castor, 
was  an  amiable  dare-devil,  but  had  much 
to  learn  in  navigation,  though  in  mere 
seamanship  he  was  well  enough.  Fortu- 
nately he  knew  his  deficiencies  and  was 
teachable. 

A  prosperous  voyage  is  an  uneventful 
one:  and  there  never  was  a  more  hum- 
drum voyage  than  the  Phoebe's  from 
Gravesend  to  Bombay.  She  was  towed 
from  Gravesend  to  Deal,  where  an  east- 
erly wind  sprang  up,  and,  increasing,  car- 
ried her  past  the  Lizard  and  out  of  sight 
of  land  ;  soon  after  the  wind  veered  a 
point  or  two  to  the  northward.  She 
sighted  Madeira  on  the  seventh  day,  and 
got  the  N.E.  Trades ;  they  carried  her 
two  degrees  north  of  the  line.  Between 
that  and  2  S.  she  fell  into  the  Doldrums. 
But  she  got  the  S.E.  Trade  sooner  than 
usual,  and  made  the  best  of  it ;  set  the 
Eoretop-mast  studding-sail,  and  went  a 
little  out  of  her  course.  At  34  S.  she  got 
into  the  steady  nor 'wester,  and,  in  due 
course,  anchored  in  Table  Bay. 

The  diamond  fever  being  at  its  height, 
several  hands  deserted  her  at  the  Cape. 
But  she  had  fair  weather,  and  reached 
Bombay  without  any  incident  worth  re- 
cording. By  this  time'  Greaves  had  put 
on  flesh  and  color,  and  though  his  heart 
had  a  scar  that  often  smarted,  it  bled  no 
longer;  and  as  to  his  appearance,  he  was 
himself  again,  all  but  a  long  and  very 
handsome  beard. 

At  Bombay  the  Phcebe  landed  part  of 
her  cargo,  and  all  her  passengers;  but 
took  a  few  fresh  ones  on  board  for  China 
— a  Portuguese  merchant  bound  for 
Macao,  and    four    ladies,    two    of    them 


officers'  wives  returning  to  their  hus- 
bands, and  two  spinsters  going  out  to 
join  their  relatives  at  Hong-Kong.  They 
were  all  more  or  less  pretty  and  intelli- 
gent, and  brightened  the  ship  amazingly; 
yet  one  day  every  man  in  her  wished, 
with  all  his  soul,  every  one  of  those  la- 
dies was  out  of  her.  She  also  shipped 
forty  Lascars,  to  make  up  for  twenty 
white  men  she  had  lost  by  death  and 
desertion. 

The  Phoebe  had  fair  weather  to  Penang, 
and  for  some  time  after,  but  not  enough 
of  it.  However,  after  the  usual  bother  in 
the  Straits  of  Malacca,  she  got  clear  and 
carried  a  light  breeze  with  her.  Captain 
Curtis  feared  it  would  be  down  sun,  down 
wind  ;  but  the  breeze  held  through  the 
first  and  greater  part  of  the  second 
watch ;  and  then,  sure  enough,  it  fell 
dead  calm. 

Mr.  Lewis  had  the  morning  watch  ;  the 
ropes  were  coiled  up  at  one  bell,  the  whip 
rigged,  the  deck  wetted  and  sanded,  and 
they  were  holy-stoning  it  when  day  began 
to  break.  Then  there  loomed  the  black 
outline  of  a  strange  sail  lying  on  the 
Phoebe's  port-beam,  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
off.  The  sun  soon  gets  his  full  power  in 
that  latitude,  and  in  a  minute  the  vessel 
burst  out  quite  clear,  a  topsail  schooner 
of  some  four  hundred  tons,  with  a  long 
snaky  hull,  taunt,  raking  masts,  and 
black  mast-heads,  everything  very  trig- 
alow  and  aloft,  sails  extremely  white ; 
she  carried  five  guns  of  large  caliber  on 
each  side. 

Lewis  reported  her  to  the  captain 
directly,  and  he  came  on  deck.  They 
both  examined  her  with  their  g-lasses. 
She  puzzled  them. 

"What  do  you  make  of  her,  Lewis  ? 
Looks  like  a  Yankee." 

"So  I  thought,  sir,  till  I  saw  her 
armament." 

Here  Greaves  joined  them,  and  the 
captain  turned  toward  him.  "  Can  she 
be  one  of  your  China  squadron?" 

"  Hardly,  unless  the  admiral  has  a 
schooner  for  his  tender  ;  and,  if  so,  she 
would  be  under  a  pennant." 

Lewis  suggested  she  might  be  a  Port- 
uguese schooner  looking  out  for  pirates. 


196 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Captain  Curtis  said  she  might,  and 
he  should  like  to  know  ;  so  he  ordered 
the  driver  to  be  brailed  up,  and  the  ship's 
colors  hoisted. 

The  next  moment  it  was  eight  bells, 
and  pipe  to  breakfast.  But  Captain 
Curtis  and  his  companions  remained  on 
deck  to  see  the  stranger  hoist  her  colors 
in  reply. 

The  schooner  did  not  show  a  rag  of 
bunting.  She  sat  the  water,  black,  grim, 
snake-like,  silent. 

Her  very  crew  were  invisible;  ye1  one 
glance  at  her  rigging  had  showed  the 
officers  of  the  Phoebe  she  was  well 
manned. 

Captain  Curl  is  had  his  breakfast 
broughl    him    on  deck. 

The  vessels  drifted  nearer  each  other, 
as  often  happens  in  a  dead  calm.  So,  at 
8:50  A.  M.,  Captain  Curtis  took  a  t  rum- 
pet,  and  hailed  the  stranger,  "Schooner 
— ahoy  .'  " 

No  answer. 

The  Plnrhc'.s  men  tumbled  up.  and 
clustered  on  the  forecastle,  and  hung 
over  ill.-  bulwarks;  for  nothing  is  more 
exciting  to  a  ship's  companj  than  hailing 
another  vessel  ;n   sea . 

Yet  not  one  of  the  schooner's  crew 
appeared. 

This  was  strange,  unnatural,  and  even 
alarming. 

The  captain,  after  waiting  some  time, 
repeated  his  hail  still  louder. 

This  time  a  single  ligure  showed  on 
board  the  schooner:  a  dark,  burly 
fellow,  with  a  straight  mustache,  a  Little 
tuft  on  his  chin,  and  wearing  a  Persian 
fez.  He  stood  by  the  foremast  swift  sure 
of  the  main  rigging,  and  bawled  through 
his  trumpet,  "Hullo  !  " 

"  What  schooner  is  1  ha1  ?  " 

'   What  ship  is  that  ?  " 

•■The  Phoebe." 

"  Where  from,  and  where  bound  ?  " 

"Penang  to  Hong-Kong.  Who  are 
you  ? ' ' 

"The  Black  Rover." 

"  Where  bound  I-  "" 

"Nowhere.     Cruising."' 

"Why  don't — ye  —  show  —  your  col- 
ors?" 


"  Ha  !— ha  !  " 

As  this  strange  laugh  rang  through 
the  trumpet  across  the  strip  of  water 
that  now  parted  the  two  vessels,  the 
Mephistophelian  figure  dived  below,  and 
the  schooner  was  once  more  deserted, 
to  all   appearance. 

It  was  curious  to  see  how  Captain 
Curtis  and  his  first  mate  now  evaded 
their  own  suspicions,  and  were  ingen- 
ious in  favorable  surmises.  Might  she 
not  be  an  armed  slaver?  or,  as  Lewis 
had  suggested,  a  Portuguese  F 

"Thai  fellow  who  answered  the  hail 
had   the  eut   of  a  Portuguese." 

But  here  Mr.  Castor   put    in    his   word. 

'■  If  She  is  km.-'  for  pirates,  she  hasn't 

far  to  go  forone,  I'm  thinking,"  said  that 
hare-brained  young  man. 

■■  Nonsense,  sir,"  said  the  captain. 
■•  Whal  do  you  know  about  pirates? 
Did   ye  ever  see  one    as   near  as  this?" 

"No,   sir." 

■■  No  more  did   I,"  said  Greaves. 

"You!"'  said  Castor.  "Not  likely. 
When  they  see  ;i  queen's  ship  thej  are 
all  wings,  and  no  beak.  Bui  they  can 
range  up  alongside  a  poor  devil  of  a  mer- 
chant man.  Not  seen  a  pirate?  no;  they 
are  rare  birds  now  :  hut  1  have  seen  ships 
of  burden  and  ships  of  war.  and  this  is 
neither.  She  is  low  in  the  water,  yet  she 
carries  no  freight,  for  she  floats  like  a 
cork.  She  i-  armed  and  well  manned, 
vet  no  crew  to  he  seen.  The  devils  are 
under  hatches,  till  the  tune  comes.  If 
she  isn't  a  pirate,  what  is  she  ?  How- 
ever, I'll  soon  know." 

"Don't  talk  so  wild,  Castor,"  said  the 
captain  :  "  and  how  can  you  know  ?  i  hey 
won't  answer  straight,  and  the3r  won't 
show  their  colors." 

"Oh,  there's  a  simple  way  you  have 
not  thought  of,'*  said  the  sapient  Castor; 
"  and  I'll  take  that  way,  if  you  will  allow 
me — I'll  board  her." 

At  this  characteristic  proposal,  made 
with  perfect  composure,  the  others  looked 
at  him  with  a  certain  ironical  admira- 
tion. 

"Board  her!"  said  the  captain.  '-I'll 
be  d d  if  you  do." 

"  Why  not,  captain  ?    There,  that  shows 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


L9? 


you  think  she  is  wicked.  Why.  we  must 
find  out  what  she  is — somehow." 

"  We  shall  know  soon  enough,"  said 
the  captain,  gloomily.  "  I  am  not  going 
to  risk  my  officers  ;  if  anybody  boards 
her,  it  shall  be  me." 

"Oh.  that  is  the  game,  is  it?"  said 
Castor,  reproachfully.  "  Why,  captain, 
you  are  a  married  man.  You  ought  to 
be  ashamed  of  j'ourself." 

"No  more  words,  sir,  if  you  please," 
said  the  captain,  sternly.  ••'Step  for- 
ward and  give  the  order  to  sling  a  butt, 
and  get  a  boat  ready  for  target  practice. 
I  shall  exercise  the  guns,  being'  a  calm. 
Perhaps  he  thinks  we  are  weaker  than 
we  are." 

As  soon  as  Castor's  back  was  turned, 
he  altered  his  tone,  and  said,  with  much 
feeling,  "  I  know  that  fool-hardy  young 
man's  mother.  How  could  I  look  her  in 
the  face  if  I  let  him  board  that  devil  be- 
fore we  know  her  intentions  ?  " 

A  butt  was  ballasted  with  sand,  so  as 
to  secure  its  floating  steadily,  bung-hole 
up  ;  the  bung  was  removed,  and  a  boat- 
hook  wedged  in,  bearing  the  ensign.  The 
butt  was  then  launched,  and  towed  out 
half  a  mile  to  starboard  ;  and  the  Phoebe 
tried  her  guns  on  it. 

If  she  had  anticipated  this  meeting,  the 
ship  could  have  poured  a  formidable  broad- 
side into  the  mysterious  stranger,  for  she 
carried  three  32-pound  carronades  of  a 
side  on  her  quarter-deck,  and  thirteen  18- 
pounders  of  a  side  on  her  gun-deck.  But 
it  was  the  old  story  ;  the  times  were  peace- 
able, the  men  were  berthed  on  the  gun- 
deck,  and,  for  their  convenience,  eighteen 
out  of  the  twenty-six  guns  had  been  struck 
down  into  the  hold. 

With  the  remaining  guns  on  the  star- 
board side  they  fired  at  the  butt,  and  so 
carefully  that,  after  an  hour's  practice, 
it  was  brought  back  very  little  the  worse. 
The  only  telling  shot  was  made  on  the 
gun-deck  b}T  a  gunner,  whose  foot  slipped 
somehow,  and  he  dropped  a  3'2-pound  ball 
on  Greaves's  ankle,  disabling  that  unfort- 
unate officer  :  he  was  carried  to  his  cabin 
in  great  pain,  and  there  attended  by  the 
surgeon. 

The  commotion  caused  bv  this  misfort- 


une was  hardly  over  upon  the  quarter- 
deck when  an  unexpected  incident  occur- 
red—an act  of  direct  insubordination. 
Mr.  Castor  had  put  on  his  uniform,  and 
persuaded  two  poor  fellows,  an  ignorant 
Lascar  and  a  reckless  Briton  like  himself, 
to  go  out  to  the  schooner  in  the  boat. 
They  slipped  into  her  as  soon  as  the 
party  came  on  board  with  the  butt, 
and  at  first  pretended  to  be  bailing  her 
out  and  examining  her  for  leaks;  but 
they  worked  quietly  alongside  till  they 
got  under  the  ship's  bows,  and  then  drop- 
ped their  oars  gently  into  the  water  and 
pulled  for  the  schooner  like  mad. 

They  were  a  third  of  the  way  before 
Captain  Curtis  caught  sight  of  them. 
He  roared  to  them  to  come  back,  and 
threatened  to  put  them  in  irons.  But 
none  are  so  deaf  as  those  who  won't 
hear ;  and  he  did  not  use  his  trumpet, 
lest  the  enemy  should  think  they  were 
disunited  on  boai'd  the  ship. 

He  and  Lewis,  therefore,  now  looked 
on  iii  silence,  and  literally  perspired  with 
anxiety  for  the  fate  of  Castor  and  his 
boat's  crew  ;  and  although  their  imme- 
diate anxiety  was  as  unselfish  as  it  was 
keen,  yet  they  were  also  conscious  that  if 
Castor  lost  his  life  in  this  rash  enter- 
prise, that  would  prove  the  commander 
of  the  schooner  felt  strong  enough  to  at- 
tack them — no  quarter  on  either  side — 
and  intended  to  do  it. 

At  this  terrible  moment,  when  their 
eyes  were  strained  to  observe  every 
movement  in  the  schooner,  and  their 
nerves  strung  up  like  violin  strings, 
female  voices  broke  gayly  in  upon  them 
with  innocent  chatter  that,  for  once,  jar- 
red as  badly  as  screams;  the  lady  pas- 
sengers had  kept  very  snug  during  the 
firing,  but  finding  it  was  quite  over, 
burst  on  the  deck  in  a  body. 

First  Lady. — "  Oh,  that's  the  ship  we 
have  been  saluting." 

Second  Lady. — "A  royal  salute." 

Third  Lady.— "Is  it  the  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh's ship,  captain  ?  " 

No  answer. 

Third,  Lady. — "  What  a  beauty  !  " 

First  Lady. — "  Why  does  she  not  sa- 
lute us  back,  captain  ?  " 


198 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


Captain. — "  Got  no  guns,  perhaps." 
First  Lath/. — "  ( )li.  yes.  she  has.  Those 
black  things  peeping  out  are  guns." 

Second  Lady. — "  Ah,  there's  one  of  our 
boats  going  to  call  on  her." 

Third  Lady. — "  Oh,  captain,  may  we 
go  on  board  of  her  ? " ' 

Captain. — "  No,  ma'am." 
Third  Lady.—-  <  >h.  dear  !  Why  not  ?  " 
( 'qptain. — "That  is  my  business." 
The   fair  speaker   tossed    her  head   and 
said.  ■•Well.  I  am  sure  !  "  bu1   she  drew 
baric   with  red   cheeks,  and  the  tears  in 
her  eyes,  at   being  snubbed  so  suddenly 
and  unreasonably  :   the  other  ladies 
ered   round   her,  and  the  winds.  "Cross 
old  thing  !  *"  were  heard  in  issue  from  the 
party,  but  fell  unheeded,  for  nen 
captain  nor  Mr.  Lewis  had   eyes  nor  ears 
except  for  the  schooner  and  the  boat.    As 
the  latter  neared   the  ship,  several  faces 

peeped,   lor    a     moment,  at    the    port  --holes 

of  t  he  sen ler. 

Vet.  when  the  boat   ran  alongside  the 

Schooner  amidships,  there  was  no  re- 
specl  shown  to  Castor's  uniform,  nor. 
indeed,  common  civility  :  it  won1- 
been  no  more  than  the  riuht  thing  to 
pipe  the  side:  but  there  were  no  sides- 
men at  all,  nor  even  a  siderope. 

Observing  this.  Captain  Curtis  shook 
his  head  very  gra^ ely. 

But  the  dare-devil  Castor  climbed  the 
schooner's  side  like  a  cat,  and  hoarded 
her  in  a  moment,  then  gave  his  men  an 
order,  and  disappeared.  The  men  pulled 
rapidly  away  from  the  schooner;  and  a 
snarl  of  contempt  and  horror  brol 
Curtis  and  his  first  male.  They  seemed 
to  be  abandoning  their  imprudent  but 
gallant  officer. 

They  pulled  about  a  hundred  yards,  and 
then  rested  on  their  oars  and  waited. 

Then  every  sailor  on  board  the  PliQ'he 
saw  instinctively  that  Castor  felt  his 
danger,  and  had  declined  to  risk  any  life 
but  his  own.  He  must  have  ordered  the 
men  to  lie  to  a  certain  tune,  then  give 
him  up  for  lost,  and  return  in  safety  to 
the  ship.  This  trait  and  his  daring  made 
Castor,  in  one  single  moment,  the  darling 
of  the  whole  ship's  company. 

The  ladies  were  requested  to  go  below, 


on  some  pretense  or  other  ;  and  the  ship 
was  cleared  for  action  as  far  as  possible. 

Meantime  words  can  hardly  describe 
the  racking  suspense  that  was  endured 
by  the  officers,  and.  in  a  great  degree,  by 
the  crew  of  the  Phoebe.  The  whole  living 
heart  of  that  wooden  structure  throbbed 
for  one  man. 

Five  minutes  passed  —  fen  —  twenty  — 
thirty — yet  lie  did  not  re-appear. 

Apprehension  succeeded  to  doubt,  and 
despair  to  apprehension. 

At  last  they  gave  him  up,  and  the  burn- 
ing desire   for  vengeance   mingled   with 

thier  fears  for  their  own  safety.  So  Strong 
was  fchis  feeling  that  the  next  event,  the 
pirate's  a  Hack  upon  that  ill-fated  officer's 
ship,  was  no  longer  regarded  with  un- 
dread.  The  thirsl  for  vengeance 
mingled   w  it  h  it . 

At  ten  o'clock  L.  M.  the  strained  eyes 
on  board  the  Phcebe  saw  two  sidesmen 
appear  amidships,  and  lix  scarlet  side- 
ropes. 

Then  came  an  officer  and  haded  ( lastor's 

boat  .       The    men    pulled    In    1  he    schooner. 

I    astor    appeared,    and    weui 
by  1  he    ropes   into   the   boat:   he  and  the 
Officer   touched    hats.       Castor  sat     down 

in  the  stern-sheets,  and  the  men  gave 
way. 

The  ship's  company  cheered,  the  side 
was  piped,  and  the  insubordinate  officer 
on  board  with  all  the  honors. 
Caps  were  waved,  eyes  glistened,  and 
.mils  extended  to  him;  but  he 
himself  did  not  seem  so  very  exultant. 
He  was  pleased  with  his  reception,  how- 
over,  and  sani.  in  his  quaint  way,  "This 
is  jolly.  I  am  not  to  he  put  in  irons, 
then." 

The  captain  drew  him  apart.  "Well, 
what  is  she  ?" 

"  Don't  know." 

••  Why,  what  do  you  mean  ?  You  have 
been  near  an  hour  aboard  her." 

"  But  I  am  none  the  wiser.  Captain,  I 
wish  you  would  have  us  all  into  your 
cabin,  and  then  I'll  tell  you  a  rum  story : 
perhaps  you  will  understand  it  among 
you,  for  you  know  my  headpiece  isn't 
Al." 

This    advice    was   taken    directly,  and 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


199 


Castor  related    bis    adventures,    in    full 
conclave,  with  closed  doors. 

MR.    CASTOR'S   NARRATIVE. 

"  The  beggar  did  not  hang-  out  so  much 
as  a  rope  to  me.  I  boarded  his  hooker 
the  same  way  I  should  like  to  board  her 
again  with  thirty  good  cutlasses  at  my 
back  ;  and  I  ordered  the  boat  to  lie  out 
of  harm's  way  for  an   hour. 

"Well,  I  soon  found  myself  on  her 
quarter-deck,  under  the  awning.  By 
George,  sir,  it  was  alive  with  men,  as 
busy  as  bees,  making  their  little  prepa- 
rations, drat  'em.  Some  were  oiling  the 
locks  of  the  guns,  some  were  cleaning 
small-arms,  some  were  grinding  cutlasses. 
They  took  no  notice  of  me  ;  and  I  stood 
there  looking  like  an  ass. 

"I  wondered  whether  they  took  me  for 
a  new  officer  just  joined  ;  but  that  was 
not  likely.  However,  I  wasn't  going  to 
notice  them,  as  they  hadn't  the  manners 
to  notice  me.  So  there  I  stood  and 
watched  them.  And  I  had  just  taken 
out  my  vesuvians  to  light  a  cigar,  when 
a  middle-aged  man,  in  a  uniform  I  don't 
know,  but  the  metal  of  it  was  silver, 
came  bustling  up,  touched  his  cap  to  the 
declc,  and  brushed  past  me  as  if  I  was 
invisible  ;  so  I  hung  on  to  his  coat-tails, 
and  brought  him  to  under  all  his  canvas." 
This  set  the  youngest  mate  giggling, 
but  he  was  promptly  frowned  down. 

"  '  Hullo  !  '    saj'S     he,    '  what    are     ye 
about  ?     Why,  who  the  deuce  are  you  ?  ' 
"  '  Second  mate  of  the  Phcebe,  along- 
side,' says  I. 

"  '  Mate  of  the  Phoebe,'  says  he  ;  'then 
what  brings  you  on  boa  rd  of  us  ?  '  That 
was  rather  a  staggerer,  but  I  thought  a 
bit,  and  said  I  wanted  to  see  the  captain 
of  the  schooner. 

"Well,  sir,  at  this  some  of  the  men  left 
off  working,  and  looked  up  at  me  as  if  I 
was  some  strange  animal. 

"'Do  you?'  says  the  officer;  'then 
you  are  the  onty  man  aboard  that  does.' 
Then  he  turned  more  friendly  like,  and 
says,  'Look  here,  young  gentleman, 
don't  you  go  to  meet  trouble.  Wait  till 
it  comes  to  you.  Go  back  to  your  ship, 
before  she  sees  you.' 


"  'She  !  Who?' 

"  '  No  matter.  You  sheer  off,  and  leave 
our  captain  alone.' 

"  Now,  gentlemen,  I'm  a  good-temper- 
ed chap ;  and  you  may  chaff  me  till  all 
is  blue  ;  but  I  can't  stand  intimidation. 
If  they  threaten  me,  it  puts  my  blood  up. 
At  school,  if  another  boy  threatened  me, 
I  never  answered  him  ;  my  fist  used  to 
fly  at  his  mouth  as  soon  as  the  threat 
was  out  of  it." 

"  Good  little  boy,"  said  Lewis. 

But  the  captain  was  impatient.  "  Come, 
sir,  we  don't  want  your  boyish  reminis- 
cences :  to  the  point,  please." 

"Ay,  ay,  sir.  Well,  then,  the  moment 
he  threatened  me,  I  just  turned  my  back 
on  him,  and  made  for  the  companion 
ladder. 

"  'Avast  there  !  '  roared  the  officer,  in 
an  awful  fright.  '  Nobody  uses  that  ladder 
but  the  captain  himself  and —  Man  alive, 
if  you  will  see  him,  follow  me.'  So  he 
led  me  down  the  main  hatch-way.  By 
the  cabin-cable  tier  1  came  all  of  a 
sudden  on  three  men  in  irons  ;  ugly  beg- 
gars they  were,  and  wild-looking,  reckless 
chaps.  One  of  them  ran  a  spare  anklet 
along  the  bar,  and  says  to  me,  '  Here  you 
are  ;  room  for  one  more.'  But  my  com- 
panion soon  stopped  his  jaw.  '  Silence  in 
irons,  or  he'll  cut  your  tongue  out,'  says 
he.  He  wouldn't  go  to  the  captain  with 
me ;  but  he  pointed  aft,  and  whispered, 
'Last  cabin  but  one,  starboard  side.' 
Then  he  sheered  off,  and  I  went  for'ard 
and  knocked  at  the  cabin  door.  No  an- 
swer ;  so  I  knocked  louder.  No  answer; 
so  I  turned  the  handle  and  opened  the 
door." 

"Young  madman  !"  groaned  the  cap- 
tain. 

"Not  so  very.  I  HAD  MY  LITTLE 
plan'.  ' ' 

"Oh,  he  had  his  little  plan,"  said 
Curtis,  ironically,  pityingly,  paternally. 
Then,  hotly,  "  Go  on,  sir;  don't  keep  us 
on  tenter-hooks,  like  this." 

"Well,  captain,  I  opened  that  door, 
and  oh,  my  eye!  it  wasn't  a  cabin:  it 
was  a  nobleman's  drawing-room :  pile 
carpet  an  inch  thick  ;  beautiful  painted 
ceiling ;   so   many  mirrors  down   to  the 


200 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


ground,  and  opposite  each  other,  they 
made  it  look  like  a  big  palace ;  satin- 
wood  tables  ;  luxurious  couches  and 
chairs ;  a  polished  brass  stove,  but  all 
the  door-handles  silver  ;  Venetians,  and 
rose-colored  blinds  and  curtains.  The 
sun  just  forced  its  way  through,  and 
made  everything  pink.  It  was  a  regular 
paradise  ;  but,  instead  of  an  angel,  there 
was  a  greal  hulking  chap,  squatted  cross- 
legged  on  an  ottoman  at  the  further  end. 
smoking  a  hookah  as  long  and  twisty  as 
a  boa-constrictor.  The  beggar  wasn't 
smoking  honest  tobacco  neither,  but 
mixed  with  rose  leaves  and  cinnamon 
shavings,  and,  in  my  opinion,  a  little  opi- 
um, for  he  turned  up  his  eyes  like  an  owl 
in  paradise.'1 

"  Not  so  very  formidable,  then." 

"  Formidable? — well,  I  wouldn't  answer 
for  that,  at  the  proper  time,  and  a1  the 
head  of  Ins  cut-throats  ;  for  he  was  a  pre- 
cious big  chap,  with  black  brows,  and  a 
wicked-looking  mustache  and  tuft.  He 
was  Hi"  sort  of  chap  thai  nigger  who 
smothers  Ins  wife  in  the  play  says  he 
killed,  'a  malignant  and  a  burbaned 
Turk."  you  know.  But  then  it  wasn'1 
his  fighting  hour;  he  was  in  smoker's 
paradise,  and  it's  my  belief  you  might 
have  man-bed  up  to  him  and  knocked  him 
on  the  head — like  one  of  those  devil-may- 
care  penguins  that  won't  budge  for  a  can- 
non-ball— and  then  he  would  have  jjoni 
smoking  on  the  ground  till  you  cut  ln- 
head  off  and  took  away  his  pipe.  But 
you'll  find  the  'Malignant  '  had  a  protec- 
tor, worse  luck,  and  one  i  hat  didn't  smoke 
spice,  but  only  looked  it .  Well,  captain, 
1  came  up  to  the  nearest  table,  and  hit  it 
pretty  bard  with  my  list  bo  see  if  I  could 
make  that  thundering  picture  jump." 

••  What  picture  ?  " 

'•  Why.  the  '  Malignant  and  the  Tur- 
baned."  Devil  a  bit.  He  took  no  notice. 
So  then  I  bawled. at  the  beggar:  •  Your 
most  obedient,  sir  :  I'm  the  second  male 
of  the  Phoebe,  lying  alongside,  and  the 
captain  has  sent  me  to  compare  longi- 
tudes.' 

"  The  '  Malignant '  took  no  notice  ;  just 
glared  at  me.  and  smoked  bis  pipe  He 
looked  just  like  that  '  Malignant  Turban  ' 


that  plays  whist  with  you  by  machinery 
in  London,  and  fixes  his  stony  eyes  on 
you  all  the  time ;  but,  with  nie  bawling 
at  him,  a  door  opened,  and  in  came  a 
flood  of  light,  and,  in  the  middle  of  it — 
Oh,  Lord  !" 

••Well,    what  ?" 

'•  Just  the  loveliest  woman  I  ever 
clapped  eye  on.  The  vision  took  me  all 
aback,  and  I  suppose  1  stared  at  her  as 
haul  as  the  '  Malignant  '  was  staring  at 
vacancy  :  for  she  smiled  at  my  astonish- 
ment, and  made  me  a  sort  of  a  haughty 
courtesy,  and  waved  her  hand  for  me  to 
sit  down.  Then  says  she,  mighty  civil — 
too  civil  by  half — 'Have  I  1  lie  pleasure 
ressing  the  captain  of  that  beauti- 
ful  ship  ?  ' 

"  '  Fin  her  second  officer,  ma'am,'  says 
1:  hut  1  was  too  dazzled  by  her  beauty  to 
her  up  an\   lies  all  in  a  moment. 

•■  •  Bound    lor   China  '(  '    says  she,  like 

honey. 

"  '  Yes,   ma'am.' 

••■A  large  crew?'  says  she,  like 
treacle. 

•■  '  About  ninety,  ma'am.'  says  I,  very 
short,  for  1   began  to  smell  a   rat. 

••'Many  European  sailors  among 
them?'    says   she. 

"So  then  I  saw  what  the  beautiful 
fiend  would  be  at.  and  1  said,  'About 
liny.' 

••  •  Indeed  ! '  says  she,  smiling  like  Ju- 
das. •  You  know  ladies  will  be  curious, 
ami    1  could  only  count  twenty-live.' 

•••The  rest  wen-  below,  coiling  ropes,' 
says   I. 

"So  she  laughed  at  that,  and  said, 
•  But   I  saw   plenty  of  Lascars.' 

■•■<>h.  our  Lascars  arc  picked  men.' 
says  1. 

••  •  I  wish  you  joy  of  them,'  she  says  : 
'  we  don't  have  them  here :  not  to  be 
trusted  in  EiiEEGE>xiES,  you  know.' 

'•  While  I  was  swallowing  this  last  pill, 
she  at  me  again.  Did  we  often  exercise 
our  guns?  I  said  of  course  we  did,  in  a 
calm.  'Why,'  said  she,  'that  is  not 
much  use  ;  the  art  is  to  be  able  to  hit 
ships  and  things  as  you  are  rising  or 
falling  on  the  waves — so  they  tell  me,' 
savs  she,  correcting  herself. 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


201 


"The  beautiful  devil  made  my  blood 
run  cold.     She  knew  too  much. 

"  '  What  is  your  cargo  ? '  says  she, 
just  as  if  she  was  our  bosom  friend.  But 
I  wouldn't  stand  any  more  of  it.  'Nut- 
megs,' says  I.  So  she  laughed,  and  said, 
•  Well,  but  seriously  ? '  So  then  I  thought 
chaffing  her  would  do  no  good,  and  I  told 
her  we  had  landed  the  valuable  part  of 
our  carg-o  at  Bombay,  and  had  only  a 
lot  of  grates  and  fire-irons  left.  I  put 
on  a  friendly  tone,  all  sham,  like  hers, 
you  know,  and  told  her  that  tea  ships 
depended  on  the  cargo  they  brought 
home,  not  on  the  odds  and  ends  thejr 
took  out  just  to  ballast  the  craft." 

"Well,  what  was  the  next  thing?"' 

"  Oh,  I  remember  she  touched  a  silver 
bell,  and  a  brown  girl,  in  loose  trousers 
and  cocked-up  shoes  and  a  turban,  came 
in  with  a  gold  tray — or  it  might  be  silver 
gilt— and  a  decanter  of  wine ;  and  the 
lovely  demon  said,  '  Pour  out  some  wine, 
Zulema.' 

'"No,  thank  you,  ma'am,'  said  I.  So 
she  laughed,  and  said  it  wasn't  poisoned. 
She  sent  off  the  slave,  and  filled  two 
glasses,  with  the  loveliest  white  hand, 
and  such  a  diamond  on  it.  She  began 
drinking  to  me.  and  of  course  I  did  the 
same  to  her.  '  Here's  to  our  next  merry 
meeting,'  said  she.  My  blood  ran  a  little 
cold  at  that;  but  I  finished  my  liquor. 
It  was  no  use  flying  a  white  feather;  so 
says  I.  'Here's  to  the  Corsair's  bride." 
Her  eyes  twinkled,  but  she  made  me  a 
civil  courtesy. 

"  '  That's  prime  Madeira,"  says  I. 

"  She  said  yes,  it  had  been  their  com- 
panion in  several  cruises. 

"'It  runs  through  a  fellow  like  oil,' 
says  I. 

"  'Then  have  some  more,'  said  she. 

"  So  I  did,  and  then  she  did  not  say  any 
moi*e,  and  the  '  Malignant  *  sat  nmm- 
chance  :  and  I  was  pumped  dry.  and  quite 
at  a  loss.  So,  not  to  look  like  a  fool,  I — 
asked  'em  to  breakfast." 

••What!     Who?" 

"Why,  the  lady  and  gentleman  :  I 
mean  the  '  Malignant '  and  '  the  Cor- 
sair's bride.'  " 

"  Youn?  madman  ! " 


•■  Why,  what  harm  could  that  do, 
captain  ?  " 

••  What  good  could  it  do  ?  What  did 
they  say  ?  " 

"She  said,  'Are  there  any  ladies 
aboard  ?  ' 

"  I  said,  '  Yes,  and  tip-top  fashionable 
ones." 

"So  then  she  looked  at  the  '  Malig- 
nant,' and  he  never  moved  a  muscle.  So 
then  she  said,  'We  will  do  ourselves  the 
pleasure — if  we  are  in  company,'  and 
she  smiled  ever  so  knowingly,  did  that 
beautiful  demon. 

'•  Then  I  pretended  cheerful.  '  That  is 
all  right,'  said  I.  '  Mind,  I  shall  tell  the 
ladies,  and  they  will  be  awfully  disap- 
pointed if  you  don't  come.' 

"•I  assure  you,'  says  she,  'we  will 
come,  if  we  are  in  company.  I  give 
you  my  hand  on  it,'  says  she,  and  she  put 
out  her  hand.  It  was  lovely  and  white, 
but  I  looked  at  it  as  if  'twas  the  devil's 
claw  ;  but  I  had  to  take  it,  or  walk  the 
plank  :  so  I  did  take  it,  and — Oh  Lord, 
would  you  believe  it? — she  gave  mine 
such  a  squeeze." 

Lewis. — ■•  Gammon  !  " 

Castor. — ••  I  tell  you  she  gave  my  flip- 
per the  most  delicious  squeeze  you  ever — 
it  was  so  long,  and  soft,  and  gentle." 

Curtis. — "But  what  was  it  for  ?  " 

Castor. — '■  At  the  time  I  thought  it 
was  to  encourage  me  ;  for  she  said,  ever 
so  softly,  'You  are  a  brave  man.'  But 
more  likely  it  was  to  delude  me  and  put 
me  off  my  guard.  Well,  I  was  for  sheer- 
ing off  after  that,  and  I  made  a  low  bow 
to  the  'Malignant.'  He  never  got  up, 
but  he  showed  his  little  bit  o'  breeding, 
took  the  snake-pipe  out  of  his  mouth, 
and  brought  his  head  slowly  down,  an 
inch  a  minute,  till  he  looked  like  pitch- 
poling  over  on  to  the  floor  and  cutting 
a  somersault  :  and.  while  he  was  going 
down  and  up  again,  the  lady  said,  'You 
had  better  wait  a  minute.'  It  was  in  a 
very  particular  way  she  said  it :  and  she 
flew  to  a  telegraph,  and  her  white  hands 
went  clicking  at  an  awful  rate  ;  and  I 
cannot  get  it  out  of  my  head  that  if  those 
white  hands  hadn't  worked  those  wires, 
I  should  have  been  cut  in  pieces  at  the 


202 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


cabin  door.  Not  that  I  cared  so  very 
much  for  that.  I  had  my  little  plan. 
However,  she  left  off  clicking  just  as 
that  old  picture  got  his  figure-head  above 
his  bows  again  :  so  I  made  my  bow  to 
'em  both,  and  sheered  off  ;  and  blest  if 
that  elderly  officer  does  not  meet  me 
at.  the  door,  and  march  before  me  to 
the  quarter-deck:  and  there's  another 
officer  hailing  my  boat  ;  and  there  were 
fine  scarlet  silk  side-ropes  fixed,  and 
two  men  standing  bj  them.  Sol  came 
away  in  stale.  But  I'm  no  wiser  than 
I  went.  Whether  it  is  an  Eastern  prince, 
out  'in  pleasure,  or  a  first-class  pirate.  1 
don't  know.  I  hope  you  will  order  a  tin- 
top  breakfast,  captain,  for  the  honor  of 
the  ship:  Lobster  curry,  for  one  thing; 
and  sharpen  cutlasses  and  clean  small- 
arms  :     and     borrow     all     .Mr.     I  .  < 

revolvers;  he  is  taking  ou1  quite  a  cargo 
of  'em:  and  thai  reminds  me  I  forgot 
to  toll  ,\oii  what  my  little  plan  was  thai 
mane  me  so  saucy.  1  borrowed  one  of 
Greaves's  six-shooters;  here  i1  is. 

file  lii-sl  sign  of  treachery  1  wasn'l  going 
to  waste  powder,  hut  just  cut  back  and 
kill  the  'Malignant'  and  the  'Corsair's 
bride:  '  for  1  argued  they  wouldn't  have 
a  successor  ready,  and  ten  lo  one  they 
would  have  a  quarrel  who  was  to  take 
the  command  :  so  thai  would  save  our 
hooker  at  the  expense  of  one  hand,  and 
him  a  bachelor.  Nobody  minds  a  bach- 
elor getting  snuffed  o 

Upon  Mr.  Castor  revealing  his  little 
plan,  the  other  officers  insisted  on  shak- 
ing hands  with  trim.  At  which  he  stared, 
hiii  consented  heartily;  and  finding  him- 
self in  such  unexpected  favor,  repeated 
his  advice.  "-  Prepare  an  excellent  break- 
fast for  to-morrow,  and  grind  cutlasses. 
and  load  the  guns  with  grape,  and  get  all 
the  small-arms  loaded,  especially  revol- 
vers: for.''  said  Castor,  "I  think  they 
mean  to  board  us  to-night,  cut  all  our 
throats,  ravish  the  women,  and  scuttle 
the  craft,  when  they  have  rifled  her  :  but 
if  they  don't.  I'm  sure  they  will  come  to 
breakfast.  She  gave  me  her  hand  on 
that,  and  the  turbaned  Turk  nodded  his 
thundering  old  piratical  figurehead." 

The  other  officers  agreed  with  him  that 


the  ship  would  probably  be  attacked  that 
night,  and  all  possible  preparations  wcvv 
made  for  her  defense.  They  barred  the 
ports  on  the  maindeck,  charged  the  can- 
non with  grape,  armed  the  Lascars  with 
cutlasses,  and  the  white  men  with  mus- 
kets as  well,  and  the  officers  and  the 
boatswain  with  cutlasses  ami  revolvers. 
The  sun  set.  and  all  was  now  grim  ex- 
pectation and  anxiety.  No  watch  was 
called,  for  the  whole  crew  was  the 
watch. 

The  moon  came  out.  and  showed  the 
cutter,  like  a  Mack  snake,  lying  abomi- 
nably  near. 

Hour  after  hour  dragged  by  in  chill 
suspense.       Each     hell,   as   it    was    struck. 

rang  like  a  solemn  knell. 
Midnighl  came,  i passed.     Morning 

approached. 

The  host  time  for  attacking  seemed  to 
have  passed. 

f    us  began  to  lessen — hopes  to  glow. 

The  elastic  Castor  began  to  transfer 
his  v  hole  anxiety  to  the  cook  and  his 
standing  firm  to  ins  theory  thai 
i  he  Corsair  and  his  bride  would  come  to 
breakfast,  if  the>  did  not  attack-  the  ship 
ight.  The  captain  pooh-poohed 
i  his :  and  indeed  ( lastor  persuaded  no- 
body hut  the  cook.  Sim  he  so  flattered 
i  ies  and  Lobster  curries, 
etc..  t hat  he  believed  anj  thii 

Day  broke,  and  t  he  ship's  company  a  nd 
officers  breathed  freely.  Some  turned  in. 
lint  siill  the  Schooner  was  closely  watched 
by  many  eyes  and  deck  glasses,  and 
keenly  suspected. 

Soon  after  eighl  bells  there  was  a 
movement  on  board  the  schooner  :  and 
this  was  immediately  reported  by  Mr. 
Castor,  then  in  charge  of  the  ship,  to 
Captain  Curtis.  He  came  on  deck  di- 
rectly. 

"You  are  right,  sir,"  said  he,  handling 
bis  glass.  ;'  and  they  are  lowering  a  boat. 
He  is  coming.  And — by  Jove,  they  are 
rigging  a  whip!  There's  a  lady.  Mr. 
Castor,  rig  a  whip  on  the  main-yard. 
Bear  a  hand  there,  forward.  Boson,  at- 
tend the  side.  Here,  sling  this  chair. 
Smart,  now- — they  are  shoving  off'." 

Six  able  oarsmen  brought  the  Corsair 


THE    JILT.— A    YAEX. 


203 


and    his    bride,    with    race-horse    speed, 
from  the  schooner  to  the  ship. 

But  there  were  smart  fellows  on  board 
the  Phoebe  too.  There  was  a  shrill  wind 
of  the  boatswain's  pipecall,  the  side  was 
promptly  manned,  the  chair  lowered  into 
the  schooner's  boat  as  she  came  along- 
side, and  gently  hoisted,  with  the  lady 
in  it.  and  she  was  landed  on  the  deck 
of  the  Phoebe. 

She  had  a  thick  veil  on. 

The  commander  of  the  schooner  drew 
up  beside  her,  and  Captain  Curtis  came 
forward,  and  the  two  commanders  off 
hats  and  bowed. 

The  captain  of  the  schooner  was  now 
gorgeous  in  a  beautiful  light  blue  uni- 
form, the  cloth  glossy  as  velvet  and 
heavy  with  silver,  as  was  also  his  cap. 

The  captain  led  the  way  to  the  cabin. 
His  guests  followed.  The  ladies  were 
duly  informed,  and  dropped  in  one  after 
another.  Then  the  Corsair's  bride  re- 
moved her  veil,  and  revealed  a  truly 
beautiful  woman,  in  the  prime  of  youth, 
with  a  divine  complexion,  and  eyes  al- 
most purple,  so  deep  was  their  blue. 

Captain  Curtis  seated  this  dazzling 
creature  to  his  right,  and,  to  the  sur- 
prise of  the  company,  her  companion  im- 
mediately seated  himself  on  her  other 
side.  The  ladies  looked  at  each  other 
and  smiled,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  He  is 
jealous;  and  no  great  wonder."  How- 
ever, they  talked  to  her  aci'oss  the  body 
of  her  lord,  and  she  to  them,  and  she  was 
a  most  piquant  addition  to  the  table,  and 
full  of  spirit.  She  seemed  devoted  to  her 
companion. 

For  all  that,  she  had  a  letter  in  her 
pocket,  which  she  intended  to  confide  to 
one  of  those  ladies  she  had  never  seen  be- 
fore in  all  her  life;  and  she  was  now 
quietly  examining  their  faces  and  judg- 
ing their  voices,  as  she  conversed  with 
them,  merely  to  make  the  best  selection 
of  a  confidante  she  could. 

The  breakfast  did  honor  to  the  ship, 
and  the  Corsair  praised  the  lobster 
curry,  and  made  himself  very  agreeable 
all  round. 

Presently  one  of  the  ladies  said  to  Mr. 
Castor,  "But  where  is   Mr.  Greaves?" 


Castor  told  her  he  had  been  disabled  by 
a  shot  a  lubberly  gunner  had  dropped  on 
his  foot,  and  was  confined  to  his  cabin. 

'•  Oh,  dear,"  said  the  lady ;  "  poor  Mr. 
Greaves  !     How  unlucky  he  is  !  " 

"  Is  it  one  of  your  officers  ?  "  asked  the 
strange  lady,  quietly. 

"No,  ma'am;  he  is  a  queen's  officer, 
lieutenant  of  the  Centaur,  going  out 
with  us  as  passenger." 

Then  the  lady  changed  color,  but  said 
nothing,  and  speedily  turned  the  con- 
versation ;  but  the  Corsair  looked  black 
as  thunder,  and  became  rather  silent  all 
of  a  sudden. 

The  ladies  rose,  and  invited  the  fair 
stranger  to  go  with  them. 

"  Please  excuse  her,"  said  the  Corsair, 
in  a  civil  but  commanding  tone. 
She  seemed  indifferent. 
Soon  after  this  an  officer  came  in.  and 
said,    joyfully,    "  Wind     from    the    nor- 
west." 

"Ah!"  said  the  stranger;  "then  we 
must  leave  you,  sir.  Come  on  deck, 
dear." 

When  they  got  on  deck,  the  lady  said, 
rather  pettishly,  "Wind?  I  feel  no 
wind."  Thereupon  Mr.  Castor  pointed 
out  to  her  a  dark  blue  line,  about  eight 
miles  off,  on  the  pale  blue  water. 

'•  Oh."'  said  she,  "  that  is  wind,  is  it  ?  " 

"  Yes,  ma'am,  and  a  good  breeze  too  ; 

it  will  be  here  in  twenty  minutes.     Why, 

j'our  boat  is  gone  !     Never  mind,  we  will 

take  you." 

"  By  all  means,"  said  she,  aloud  ;  then, 
as  she  turned  from  him,  she  said,  in  a 
swift  whisper,  "  Sit  near  me  in  the  boat ; 
I've  something  for  you." 

Now  this  conversation  passed  at  the 
head  of  the  companion  ladder,  and 
Greaves  heard  the  lady's  voice  though 
not  the  words.  He  started  violently, 
huddled  on  his  clothes,  and  would  have 
hobbled  on  deck  ;  but  the  boat  was 
brought  alongside  in  full  view  from  the 
port  windowr  of  his  cabin.  He  heard  her 
grate  the  ship's  side,  and  opened  the 
window  just  as  the  lady  was  lowered 
into  the  boat.  The  chair  was  hoisted. 
The  lady,  with  her  veil  down  as  she  had 
come,  took  her  seat  on  the  stern  thwart, 


204 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


beside  her  companion,  Castor  sitting  at 
the  helm. 

"  Shove  off  !  "  was  the  word. 

Then,  as  they  turned  the  boat's  head 
round,  the  lady,  who  had  seen  Greaves 
through  her  veil,  and  had  time  to  recog- 
nize him  in  spite  of  his  beard,  lifted  her 
veil  for  one  moment,  and  showed  him  the 
face  of  Ellen  Ap  Rice— that  face  he  had 
loved  so  well,  ami  suffered  so  cruelly  for 
loving  it.  That  face  was  now  pale  am! 
eloquent  beyond  the  power  of  words. 
There  was  self-reproach,  a  prayer  fur  for- 
giveness, and,  stranger  si  ill.  a  prayer  to 
that  injured  friend — for  help. 


PART    III. 

The  boat  proceeded  on  her  way.  Ellen 
pointed  to  windward,  and  said,  "See, 
Edward,  the  dark  hue  is  ever  so  much 
nearer  us." 

Laxlon  turned  his  head  to  windward 
directly,  and  some  remarks  passed  be- 
tween him  and  Castor. 

Ellen  had  counted  on  this:  she  availed 
herself  of  it  to  whip  a  letter  out  of  her 
pocket,  and  write  in  pencil  an  address 
upon  the  envelope.  This  she  did  under  a 
shawl  upon  her  lap.  Then  she  kept  quiet, 
and  wailed  an  opportunity  to  do  some- 
thing more  dangerous. 

But  none  came.  Laxton  sat  square 
with  her.  and  could  see  everj'  open  move- 
ment of  her  hand. 

They  were  within  ten  yards  of  the 
schooner,  and  the  side  manned  to  receive 
them. 

Just  then  Laxton  stood  up,  and  cried 
out,  "  Forward  there — stand  by  to  loose 
che  jib." 

The  moment  he  stood  up,  Mrs.  Laxton 
whipped  the  letter  out  from  under  her 
shawl,  and  held  it  by  her  left  side,  but  a 
little  behind  her,  where  nobody  could  see 
it,  except  Castor.     She  shook  it  in  her 


fingers  very  eloquently,  to  make  that 
officer  observe  it.  Then  she  leaned  a 
little  back,  and  held  it  toward  him  ;  but, 
with  female  adroitness,  turned  it  outward 
in  her  hand,  so  that  not  one  of  the  many 
eyes  in  the  boat  could  see  it. 

A  moment  of  agony,  and  then  she  felt 
fingers  much  larger  and  harder  than  hers 
take  it  quietly,  and  convey  it  stealthily 
away.  Her  panting  bosom  relieved  itself 
of  a    sigh. 

•■  What  is  the  matter?"  said  the  watch- 
ful Laxton. 

'•  The  matter:-'     Nothing,"  said  she. 

•'I  hope."  said  he.  ••you  are  not  sorry 
to  return  to  our  humble  craft?  " 

••  1  have  seen  none  I.,  compare  with 
her."  said  she.  fencing  boldly,  hut  trem- 
bling to  herself. 

The  next   moment  she  was  on  board  the 

schooner,  and  waited  to  see  the  boat  oil'. 
and  also  to  learn,  if  possible,  whether 
Castor  had  her  letter  all  sale,  and  would 
take  it   to  its  address. 

To  her  consternation  she  heard  Laxton 
invite  ( 'a  si  or  to  conn'  onboard  a  moment. 

She  tried  to  catch  Castor's  eye  and 
warn  him  to  do  nothing  of  the  kind. 

Bui  the   light-hearted   officer  assented 

an',  was  on  the  quarter-deck  next 
moment . 

Laxton  waved  the  others  to  fall  back; 
hut  Ellen  would  not  lea  ve  them  together  : 
she  was  loo  a  pproheusive,  knowing  what 
She  had  jiist   mine. 

•■  I  have  not  t  he  honor  of  knowing  \  our 
name,  sir:    mine  is  Edward  Laxton." 

•■  Mine  is  Dick  Castor,  sir,  at  your  ser- 
vice, and  yours,  ma'am."  And  he  took 
this  fair  opportunity,  and  gave  Ellen  a 
look  that  made  her  cheeks  burn,  for  it 
said,  plainly.  "Your  letter  is  in  safe 
hands." 

"Well,  Mr.  Castor,"  said  Laxton, 
"  you  are  the  sort  I  want  on  board  this 
schooner  :  yon  are  a  man  of  nerve.  Now 
I  have  never  had  a  sailing-master  yet,  be- 
cause I  don't  need  one — I  am  an  enthu- 
siast in  navigation,  have  studied  it  for 
years,  theoretically  and  practically — but 
I  want  a  first  lieutenant,  a  man  with 
nerve.  What  do  you  say.  now  ?  Five 
hundred  a  year,  and  a  swell  uniform." 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


205 


"Well,  sir,  the  duds  don't  tempt  me; 
but  the  pay  is  very  handsome,  and  the 
craft  is  a  heauty." 

Laxton  bowed  ceremoniously.  "  Let 
me  add,"'  said  he  gravely,  "that  she  is 
the  forerunner  of  many  such  vessels.  At 
present,  I  believe,  she  is  the  only  armed 
yacht  afloat ;  hut,  looking  at  the  aspect 
of  Europe,  we  may  reasonably  hope  some 
nice  little  war  or  other  will  spring-  up  ; 
then  the  Rover  can  play  an  honorable, 
and,  indeed,  a  lucrative  part.  My  first 
lieutenant's  prize  money  will  not  be  less, 
I  should  imagine,  than  twenty  thousand 
a  year  ;  an  agreeable  addition  to  his  pay, 
sir."" 

"Delightful!"  said  Castor.  "But 
they  sometimes  hang'  a  privateer  at  the 
yardarm  ;  so  I  should  be  quite  contented 
with  my  quiet  little  five  hundred,  and 
peaceful  times." 

"Well,  then,  tell  'em  to  sheer  off,  and 
fetch  your  traps." 

"Yes,  do,  Mr.  Castor."  said  Ellen. 
"  You  can  send  a  line  to  explain."  That 
was  to  get  her  own  letter  delivered,  the 
sly  thing. 

Castor  shook  his  head.  "  Sorry  to  dis- 
oblige you.  ma'am,  and  to  refuse  you,  sir  ; 
but  things  can't  be  done  that  way.  A 
seaman  must  not  desert  his  ship  on  her 
voyage.  Catch  me  in  port  and  make  the 
same  offer,  I'll  jump  mast-high  at  it." 

"Well,"  said  Laxton,  "what  port  are 
you  to  be  caught  in  ?  " 

"Why,  it  must  be  London  or  Hong- 
Kong.  I  shall  be  three  months  at  Hong- 
Kong." 

Laxton  said  he  had  not  intended  to 
cruise  so  far  west  as  that,  but  he  would 
take  a  note  of  it.  "  You  are  worth  going 
a  little  out  of  the  way  for,"  said  he. 

While  he  was  making  his  note,  "  Bang  " 
went  a  gun  from  the  Phoebe,  and  she  was 
seen  hoisting  sail  with  great  rapidity  ;  her 
rigging  swarmed  with  men. 

"  There,  that's  for  us,"  said  Castor. 

"No  hurry,  sir,"  said  Laxton  ;  "he  is 
going  to  tack  instead  of  veering ;  she'll 
hang  in  the  wind  for  half  an  hour.  For- 
ward there — hoist  the  flying-jib  and  the 
foretop-sel.  Helm  aweather !  Veer  the 
ship.     Mr.  Castor,  bid  your  men  hold  on. 


We  must  not  part  without  a  friendly 
glass." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Ellen.  "I  will  order 
it." 

Some  of  the  prime  Madeira  was  imme- 
diately brought  on  deck  ;  and  while  they 
were  all  three  drinking  to  each  other,  the 
impatient  Phoebe  fired  another  gun.  But 
Castor  took  it  coolly  ;  he  knew  Laxton 
was  right,  and  the  ship  could  not  come 
round  on  the  port  tack  in  a  hurry.  He 
drank  his  second  glass,  shook  hands  with 
Laxton,  and  then  with  Mrs.  Laxton,  re- 
ceived once  more  an  eloquent  .pressure  of 
her  soft  hand,  and  this  time  returned 
it,  to  give  her  confidence,  and  looked 
courage  into  her  eyes,  that  met  his 
anxiously.  Then  he  put  off ;  and  though 
the  Phoebe  was  now  nearly  a  mile  off,  he 
easily  ran  alongside  her  before  she  paid 
off  and  got  her  head  before  the  wind. 

His  mind  wTas  in  a  troubled  state.  He 
was  dying  to  know  what  this  lovely  wo- 
man, who  had' fallen  in  love  with  him  so 
suddenly,  had  written  to  him.  But  he 
would  not  open  it  right  in  sight  of  the 
schooner  and  so  many  eyes.  He  was  a 
very  loyal  fellow. 

At  a  good  distance,  he  took  it  carefully 
out,  and  his  countenance  fell ;  for  the  let- 
ter was  sealed,  and  addressed, 

"Lieut.  Greaves.  R.N." 

Here  was  a  disappointment  and  a  blow 
to  the  little  amorous  romance  which  Mr. 
Castor,  who,  among  his  other  good  quali- 
ties, was  inflammable  as  tinder,  had  been 
constructing  ever  since  the  Corsair's 
bride  first  di'ank  to  him  and  pressed  his 
hand. 

He  made  a  terribly  wry  face,  looking  at 
the  letter  :  but  he  said  to  himself,  with  a 
little  grunt,  "  Well,  there's  nothing  lost 
that  a  friend  gets." 

As  soon  as  he  had  boarded  the  Phoebe, 
and  seen  the  boat  replaced  on  the  davits, 
the  good  -  natured  fellow  ran  down  to 
Greaves's  cabin,  and  found  him  sitting 
dejected,  with  his  head   down. 

"Cheer  up,  Mr.  Greaves,"  cries  Cas- 
tor; '-luck  is  changed.  Here  is  a  fair 
wind,  and  every  rag  set,  and  the  loveliest 


206 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


woman  I  ever  clapped  eyes  on  has  been 
and  written  you  a  letter;  and  there  it 
is.'; 

••  It  is  from  her  !  "  cried  Greaves,  and 
began  to  open  it,  all  in  a  tremble.  "  She 
is  in  trouble.  Castor.  I  saw  it  in  her 
face." 

"Trouble!  not  she.  Schooner  Al.  and 
money  in  both  pockets." 

"Trouble,  1  tell  you  :  and  great  trouble, 
or  she  would  never  have  written  to  me." 
By  this  time  he  had  opened  the  letter, 
and  was  busied  in  the  contents.  "It 
wasn't  tn  me  she  wrote,"  he  sighed. 
■■  How  could  it  be  ?  "  He  read  it  through. 
and  then  handed  it  to  Castor. 

The  letter  ran  thus  : 

'•  1  have  written  this  in  hopes  I  may  be 
able  to  give  it  to  some  lady  on  board  the 
Phoebe  or  to  one  of  fche  officers,  and  thai 
something  may  be  done  to  rescue  me, 
and  prevent  some  terrible  misfortune. 

■•  M\  husband  is  a  madman.  It  is  his 
mania  bo  pas-  for  a  pirate,  and  frighten 
Unarmed  vessels.  (Inly  last  week  we  fell 
iii  with  a  Dutch  brig,  and  he  hoist< 
hi  ick  Bag  with  a  white  death's-head  and 
cross-bones,  a  nd  Bred  a  shol  across  the 
Dutchman's  bows.  The  Dutchman  hove 
to  directly,  bul  took  to  Ins  boats.  Then 
Mr.  Laxton  thoughl  he  had  done  enough, 
so  he  Bred  a  gun  to  leeward,  in  token  of 
amity:  bul  the  poor  Dutchman  did  nol 
understand,  and  the  crew  pulled  their 
boats  toward  .lava  Head,  full  ten  miles 
off,  and  abandoned  theirship.  I  told  him 
it  was  too  cruel  :  but  he  spoke  quite  harsh- 
ly to  me,  and  said  that  lubbers  who  i 
know  the  meaning  of  a  gun  to  leeward 
had  no  business  afloat.  All  I  could  per- 
suade him  to  was  to  sail  quite  away,  ami 
let  the  poor  Dutchmen  see  they  could 
comeback  to  their  ship.  She  could  not 
fly  from  them,  because  she  was  hove  to. 

••He  tried  this  experiment  on  the 
Phoebe,  and  got  the  men  to  join  him  in 
it.  He  told  me  every  word  I  was  to  say 
to  the  officer.  The  three  who  were  put 
in  irons  had  a  guinea  apiece  for  it  and 
double  groe:.  He  only  left  off  because 
the  officer  who  came  on  board  was  such 
a  brave  man,  and  won  his  respect  direct- 


ly ;  for  he  is  as  brave  as  a  lion  himself. 
And  that  is  the  worst  of  it  ;  if  a  frigate 
caught  him  playing  the  pirate,  and  fired 
at  him,  he  would  be  sure  to  fire  back,  and 
court  destruction. 

"  His  very  crew  are  so  attached  to  him. 
and  so  highly  paid — for  he  is  extremely 
rich — and  sailors  are  so  reckless,  that  I 
am  afraid  they  would  fight  almost  any- 
body at  a  distance.  But  I  think  if  they 
hi  officer  on  board  in  his  uniform, 
and    he  spoke   to  them,    they   would  come 

iii  i  hen-  senses;  because  they  are  many 
of  them  men-of-war's  men.  But.  indeed, 
1  fear  he  bribed  some  of  1  hem  out  of  the 
queen's   ships  ;    anil    I    don't     know    what 

those  fellows  might  not  do.  because  they 
an'  deserters. 

•■  It  is  my  hope  and  prayer  that  the 
rapt  am  and  officers  of  the  Phoebe  will. 
all  of  them,  tell  a  greal  many  other  cap- 
bains,  especially  of  armed  vessels,  not  to 
lake  tie-  Rover  for  a  real  pirate,  and  Bre 
on  him.  but  to  come  on  board,  and  put 
him  under  reasonable  restraint  for  Ins 
own   sake  and  that    of  others  at  sea. 

••  As  lor  myself.  1  believe  my  own  life 
is  hardly  safe.  He  has  fits  of  violence 
which  he  cannot  help,  pom-  fellow,  and 
is  very  sorry  for  afterward ;  but  they  are 
becoming  more  frequent,  and  he  is  get- 
ing  worse  in  every  way. 

•'But  it  is  not  for  myself  I  write  these 

lines,  so   much   as   1"   prevent   wholesale 

f.     I  behaved  ill  in  marrying  h'im, 

and   must    take   my  chance,  and   perhaps 

pay  my  penalty.  ELLEN  LaXTON." 

••  Well.  ( lastor,"  said  Greaves,  eagerly, 

•■what     shall   we   do?      Will     the   cant:, in 

let  vim  take  volunteers  and  board  her?" 

••Certainly  not!  Why,  here's  a  fair 
wind,  and  stunsels  set  to  catch  every 
puff." 

■■  For  Heaven's  sake,  take  him  her  let- 
ter, and   try  him." 

••  I'll  do  that,  but  it  is  no  use." 

He  took  the  letter,  and  soon  came  back 
with  a  reply  that  Captain  Curtis  sym- 
pathized with  the  lady,  and  would  make 
tli-  case  known  to  every  master  in  his 
service. 

'•  And  that  is  all  he  is  game  for  !  "  said 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


mi 


Greaves  contemptuously.  "  Castor,  lend 
me  your  arm.  1  can  hobble  on  deck  well 
enough." 

He  got  on  deck,  and  the  schooner  was 
three  miles  to  leeward  and  full  a  mile 
astern,  with  nothing  set  but  her  top- 
sails and  flying-jib. 

Greaves  groaned  aloud.  "He  means 
to  part  company.  We  shall  never  see 
her  again."  He  groaned,  and  went  down 
to  his  cabin  again. 

He  was  mistaken.  Laxton  was  only 
giving  the  ship  a  start,  in  order  to  try 
rates  of  sailing.  He  set  his  magnificent 
mainsail  and  foresail  and  main-jib,  and 
came  up  with  the  ship  hand  over  head, 
the  moderate  breeze  giving  him  an  ad- 
vantage. 

Castor  did  not  tell  Greaves,  for  he 
thought  it  would  only  put  him  in  a  pas- 
sion,  and  do  no  good. 

So  the  first  intimation  Greaves  got  was 
at  about  4  p.m.  He  was  seated,  in  deep 
sorrow,  copying  his  lost  sweetheart's  let- 
ter, in  order  to  carry  out  her  wishes,  when 
the  shadow  of  an  enormous  jib-sail  fell 
on  his  paper.  He  looked  up,  and  saw 
the  schooner  gliding  majestically  along- 
side, within  pistol-shot. 

He  flew  on  deck,  in  spite  of  his  lame 
foot,  and  made  the  wildest  propositions. 
He  wanted  a  broadside  fired  at  the 
schooner's  masts  to  disable  her ;  wanted 
Captain  Curtis  to  take  the  wind  out  of 
her  sails,  and  run  on  to  her,  grapple 
her,  and  board  her. 

To  all  this,  as  might  be  supposed,  Cap- 
tain Curtis  turned  a  deaf  ear. 

"  Interfere,  with  violence,  between  man 
and  wife,  sir !  Do  you  think  I  am  as  mad 
as  he  is  ?  Attack  a  commander  who  has 
just  breakfasted  with  me,  merely  because 
he  has  got  a  .tile  loose?  Pray  compose 
yourself,  Mr.  Greaves,  and  don't  talk 
nonsense.  I  shall  keep  my  course,  and 
take  no  notice  of  his  capers.  And.  Mr. 
Greaves,  I  am  sorry  for  you — you  are 
out  of  luck — but  every  dog  has  his  day. 
Be  patient,  man,  for  God's  sake,  and 
remember  you  serve  her  majesty,  and 
should  be  the  last  to  defy  the  law.  You 
should  set  an  example,  sir." 

This  brought  that  excellent  officer  to 


his  bearings,  and  he  sat  down  all  of  a 
heap  and  was  silent,  but  tears  of  agony 
came  out  of  his  eyes,  and  presently 
something  occurred  that  made  him  start 
up  in  fury  again. 

For  Laxton's  quick  eye  had  noticed  him 
and  his  wild  appeals,  and  he  sent  down 
for  Mrs.  Laxton.  When  she  came  up, 
he  said,  "  My  dear,  there's  a  gentleman 
on  deck  who  did  not  breakfast  with  us. 
There  he  sits  abaft  the  mainmast,  look- 
ing daggers  at  us.     Do  you  know  him  ?"' 

Ellen  started. 

••Ah,  you  do  know  him.  Tell  rne  his 
name." 

"  His  name  is  Arthur  Greaves." 

••  What,  the  same  that  was  spooney 
on  you  when  I  sailed  into  Tenby  Har- 
bor?" 

"  Yes,  yes.  Pray  spare  me  the  sig-ht 
of  the  man  I  wronged  so  wickedly." 

•'Spare  you  the  sight,  \ou  lying  devil  ! 
Why.  you  raised  your  veil  to  see  him  the 
better."  With  these  words  he  caught 
her  hastily  round  the  waist  with  his 
powerful  arm,  and  held  her  in  that 
affectionate  position,  while  he  made  his 
ironical  adieux  to  the  ship  he  was  out- 
sailing. 

During  the  above  dialogue,  the  schoon- 
er being  directly  under  the  ship's  lee,  the 
wind  was  taken  out  of  the  swifter  craft's 
sails,  and  the  two  vessels  hung  together 
a  minute  ;  but  soon  the  schooner  forged 
ahead,  and  glided  gradually  away,  steer- 
ing a  more  southerly  course  ;  and  still 
those  two  figures  were  seen  interlaced 
upon  her  deck,  in  spite  of  the  lady's  letter 
in  Greaves's  possession. 

"The  hell  of  impotence,"  says  an  old 
writer.  Poor  Greaves  suffered  that  hell 
all  the  time  the  schooner  ran  alongside 
the  ship,  and  nobody  would  help  him 
board  her,  or  grapple  her,  or  sink  her. 
Then  was  added  the  hell  of  jealousy  ;  his 
eyes  were  blasted  and  his  soul  sickened 
with  the  actual  picture  of  his  old  sweet- 
heart embraced  by  her  lord  and  master 
before  all  the  world.  He  had  her  letter, 
addressed,  though  not  written,  to  him  ; 
but  Laxton  had  her,  and  the  picture  of 
possession  was  public.  Greaves  shook 
his  fist  at  him  with  impotent  fury,  howl- 


208 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


ed  impotent  curses  at  him,  that  every- 
body heard,  even  the  ladies,  who  had  come 
on  deck  well  pleased,  seeing-  only  the  sur- 
face of  thing's,  and  were  all  aghast  when 
Greaves  came  up  all  of  a  sudden,  and 
stormed  and  raged  at  what  to  them  was 
that  pretty  ship  and  justly  affectionate 
commander;  still  more  aghast  when  all 
this  torrent  came  to  a  climax,  and  the 
strong  man  fell  down  in  a  fit.  and  was 
carried,  gnashing  and  foaming  and  insen- 
sible, to  bis  cabin. 

On  board  the  schooner  all  was  not  so 
rosy  as  it  looked.  Mrs.  Lax  ton,  quietly 
imprisoned  by  an  iron  band,  and  forced 
into  a  pictorial  attitude  of  affection  quite 
out  of  character  with  her  real  sentiments 
— which  at  that  moment  were  fear,  re- 
piignanee.  remorse,  and  shame — quivered 
and  writhed  in  that  velvet-iron  embrace  : 
her  cheeks  were  rrtl.  al  first,  with  burn- 
ing blushes;  l)ui  by  degrees  they  became 
very  pale;  her  lips  quivered,  and  lost  all 
color;  and,  soon  after  Greaves  was  car- 
ried below,  her  body  began  to  collapse, 
and  at  last,  she  was  evidently  about  to 
faint  ;  hut  her eha useable  husband  looked 
in  her  face,  uttered  a  cry  of  dismay,  and 
supported  her.  with  a  world  of  tender- 
ness, into  the  cabin,  ami  laying  her  on  a 
sofa,  recovered  her  with  all  the  usual 
expedients,  and  then  soothed  her  with 
the  tenderest  expressions  of  solicitude 
and   devotion. 

It  was  not  the  first  time  bis  tyranny 
had  ended  in  adorai  ion  and  tenderness. 
Tne  couple  had  shed  many  tears  of  rec- 
onciliation:  but  the  Quest  fabric  wears 
oul  in  time:  and  the  blest  shade  of  Lord 
Byron  must  forgive  me  if  I  declare  that 
even  '-Pique  her  and  soothe  by  turns" 
may  lose  its  charm  by  what  Shakespeare 
calls  "damnable  iteration."  The  reader, 
indeed,  might  gather  as  much  from  Mrs. 
Laxton's  reply  to  her  husband's  gushing 
tenderness.  "  There — there — I  know  you 
love  me.  in  your  way  :  and.  if  you  do, 
please  leave  me  in  peace,  for  I  am  quite 
worn  out." 

"  Queen  of  my  soul,  your  lightest  word 
is  a  command."  said  the  now  chivalrous 
spouse ;  impressed  a  delicate  kiss  upon 
her  brow,  and  retired,  backward,  with  a 


gaze  of  veneration,  as  from  the  presence 
of  his  sovereign. 

This  sentiment  of  excessive  veneration 
did  not,  however,  last  twenty-four  hours. 
He  thought  the  matter  over,  and  early 
next  morning  he  brought  a  paint-pot 
into  the  cabin,  and  having  stirred  some 
of  his  wife's  mille-fleur  into  it,  proceeded 
to  draw,  and  then  paint,  a  certain  word 
over  a  small  cupboard  or  locker  in  the 
state  cabin. 

Mrs.  Laxton  came  iu,  and  found  him 
so  employed.  "What  a  horrid  smell!" 
said  she,  pettishly.     •'Paint  !" 

"  What,  do  you  smell  it?"  said  he.  in 
a  humble,  apologetic  tone.  "I  thought 
1  had  succeeded  in  disguising  it  with 
something  more  agreeable  to  the  nostrils 
of  beauty — the  essence  of  a  thousand 
flowers." 

"You  have  not,  then:  and  what  are 
you  doing?  " 

"  Painting  a  word  on  this  locker.  A 
salutary  word.  Behold,  queen  of  this 
ship  and  your  husband's  heart!  "and  he 
showed  her  t  he  word  "  discipline  "beau- 
tifully written  in  large  letters  and  in  an 
arch. 

She  began  to  quake  a  little  :  but  being 
high-spirited,  she  said.  "Yes,  it  is  a  sal- 
utary word,  and  if  it  had  been  applied  to 
you  when  a  boy.  it  would  be  all  the  better 
for  you  now — and  for  me  too." 

"It  would,"  said  he,  gravely.  "But 
I  had  no  true  friend  to  correct  the  little 
faults  of  youth.  You  have.  You  have 
a  husband,  who  knows  how  to  sail  a 
woman.  •  Saunter  hi  modo,  fort  iter  in 
re,'  that's  the  rule,  when  one  is  blessed, 
and  honored,  and  tormented,  with  the 
ch  irge  of  capricious   beauty." 

Then  Mrs.  Laxton  took  fright,  and  said, 
cajolingly,  she  really  believed  lie  was  the 
wisest  man  upon  the  seas. 

As  he  was,  at  all  events,  one  of  the 
vainest,  this  so  gratified  him  that  no  fur- 
ther allusion  to  her  faults  was  made  that 
day. 

The  next  morning  two  sailors  had  a 
fight  for  the  affections  of  Susan  Tucker, 
Mrs.  Laxton's  Welsh  maid,  whom  he  had 
made  her  color  and  rig  out  as  Zulema,  in 
that  little  comedv  with  Castor. 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


209 


Thereupon  Laxton  complained  to  her, 
and  said,  "  I  cannot  have  the  peace  of 
the  vessel  disturbed  by  that  hussy.  I 
shall  discharge  her.'* 

"  What,  into  the  sea,  dear  ?  '*  said  Mrs. 
Laxton,  rather  pertly. 

"No  love.  Though  I  don't  see  why  I 
shouldn't  launch  her  in  an  open  boat,  with 
a  compass,  and  a  loaf,  and  a  barrel  of 
water,  and  a  bottle  of  hair  oil — she  uses 
that,  the  nasty  little  pig.  That  sort  of 
thing  has  been  done,  on  less  provocation, 
to  Captain  Blyth,  and  many  others.  No, 
I  shall  fire  across  the  bows  of  the  first 
homeward-bound — " 

Mrs.  Laxton  uttered  a  loud  sigh  of  dis- 
may. 

— "  And  send  that  little  apple  of  discord 
back  to  its  own  orchard  in  South  Wales — 
he  !  he !   he  !  " 

This  was  no  laughing  matter  to  poor 
Mrs.  Laxton.  She  clasped  her  hands. 
"  Oh,  Edward,  show  me  some  mercy  !  I 
have  never  been  without  a  woman  about 
me.  Oh,  pray  don't  let  me  be  alone  in 
a  ship,  surrounded  by  men,  and  not  one 
woman  !  " 

"  For  shame,  Ellen  !  "  said  he,  severely. 
"  You  are  a  pirate's  bride,  and  must  rise 
above  your  sex.  I  devote  myself  to  your 
service  as  lady's-maid.  It  would  be  odd 
indeed  if  a  man  who  can  pass  a  weather 
earing,  couldn't  humble-cum-stumble  a 
woman's  stays." 

"  That  is  not  it.  If  she  goes,  my  life 
will  not  be  safe." 

"  Not  safe  !  with  me  to  look  after  it !  " 

"  No,  3Tou  villain  ! — you  hypocrite  !  If 
she  goes,  my  life  will  not  be  safe  from 
ijou."  She  was  wild  with  anger  and 
fear. 

"  These  are  hard  words,"  said  he,  sor- 
rowfully. Then,  firmly,  "  I  see  the  time 
has  come  for  discipline;  "  and  though  his 
words  were  wondrous  calm,  he  seized  her 
suddenly  by  the  nape  of  the  neck.  She  ut- 
tered one  scream ;  the  next  he  stopped 
with  his  other  hand,  and  she  bit  it  to  the 
bone;  but  he  never  winced.  "Come." 
said  he,  "I'll  use  no  unnecessary  violence. 
'  Suaviter  in  modo,  fort  iter  in  re,'  is  the 
sailing  order;"  and  in  a  few  moments 
she  was  bundled,    struggling  violently, 


into  the  locker,  and  the  key  turned  on 
her. 

Though  his  hand  bled  freely,  he  kept 
his  word,  and  used  no  unnecessary  vio- 
lence, provided  you  grant  him,  by  way 
of  postulate,  that  it  was  necessary  to 
put  her  into  that  locker  at  all.  Only  as 
she  fought  and  bit  and  scratched  and 
kicked  and  wriggled  her  very  best,  the 
necessary  violence  was  considerable. 

That  was  her  fault,  not  his,  he  con- 
ceived. He  used  no  unnecessary  vio- 
lence. He  now  got  a  napkin  and  tied 
up  his  hand.  Then  he  took  a  center- 
bit,  and  bored  holes  in  the  paneled  door. 

This,  he  informed  his  prisoner,  was 
necessaiy.  "Without  a  constant  sup- 
ply of  fresh  air,  you  would  be  uncom- 
fortable ;  and  your  comfort  is  very  dear 
to  me." 

He  then  remarked  that  she  ought  to 
have  a  sentinel.  Respect,  as  well  as  safe 
custody,  demanded  that ;  and,  as  he  was 
his  own  factotum,  he  would  discharge 
that  function.  Accordingly,  he  marched 
past  the  locker,  to  and  fro,  without  ceas- 
ing, till  there  was  a  knock  at  his  cabin 
door,  and  a  sail  reported  to  leeward. 

"  Homeward  bound  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Then  close  up  with  her,  and  get  my 
gig  ready  to  board  her." 

When  he  came  near  her,  it  proved  to 
be  one  of  Mr.  Green's  tea  ships  ;  so  he 
fired  a  gun  to  leeward,  instead  of  sending 
a  shot  across  her  bows ;  and  then  he 
launched  his  gig,  with  Susan  blubbering 
in  the  stern-sheets,  and  her  clothes  in  a 
hammock. 

The  ship,  for  a  wonder,  condescended 
to  slack  her  main-sheet,  and  the  boat, 
being  very  swift,  ran  up  to  her  astern, 
and  the  officer  in  command  of  the  boal 
offered  forty  pounds  for  a  passage. 

They  happened  to  want  a  female  ser- 
vant, and  so  they  took  her,  with  a  little 
grumbling ;  and  she  got  her  fare,  or  the 
greater  portion  of  it,  paid  her  for  wages 
at  Southampton.    So  I  am  told,  however. 

The  pursuit  and  capture  of  the  ship, 
and  the  hoisting  on  board  of  Susan,  were 
all  reported,  during  their  actual  progress, 
with  great  bonhomie,    to   Mrs.   Laxton, 


210 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


through  her  air-holes,  by  her  spouse  and 
sentinel,  and  received  with  sobbing  and 
sullen  tears. 

When  the  boat  came  back,  Laxton  put 
on  a  bright  and  cheerful  air.  "There," 
said  he  to  his  prisoner,  "  the  bone  of 
contention  is  gone,  and  peace  is  restored 
— nautical  peace  and  domestic  peace. 
Aren't  you  glad  ?  " 

No  answer. 

"  Don't  be  sulky,  dear.  That  shows  a 
bad  disposition,  and  calls  for  discipline. 
Open  your  mind  tome.  This  is  the  cel- 
lular system,  universally  approved.  How 
do  you  lind  it  work  ?  How  do  you  feel, 
love?  A  little— subjugated— eh  ?  Tell 
the  truth  now." 

"Yes;  quite  subjugated,"  said  a  fainl 
voice.     ••  Pray  Le1  me  out." 

•■  With  pleasure,  deal'.  Why  did  you 
not  ask  me  before  ':  " 

I  [e  opened  t  he  door,  and  there 
poor  woman,  croui  upboard  that 

only  just  held  her,  seated  on  the  ground 
with  her  knees  half  waj  in.    She 

came  oul  wit  h  her  ej  es  as  wild  as  anj 
beast  of  the  forest  thai  had  been  caughl 
in  a  trap,  ami  tottered  to  a  seat.  She 
ran  her  white  hands  recklessly  into  her 
hair,  and  rocked  herself.  "  Oh,  my 
God!"  she  cried.  "Susan  gone:  and  I 
am  alone  with  a  madman  !  I'm  a  lost 
woman ! 

Laxton  pitied  her  distress  and  set  him- 
self to  eool  her  fears.  '-Don't  talk  like 
that  .  dearest ."  said  he:  "a  little  disci- 
pline is  wholesome.  Whal  have  you  to 
fear  from  a  man  whose  sportive  ensign, 
no  doubt,  is  a  death's-head  and  cross- 
bones:  but  his  motto  is  '  Suavitcr  in 
modo,  forliter  in  re.'  Look  here  ;  here 
is  an  ensanguined  cloth.  Mine  is  I 
blood  that  has  been  shed  in  our  little  lov- 
ing encounter ;  the  only  blood  that  ever 
shall  be  shed  between  us,  sweet  tigress 
of  my  soul." 

<•  Forgive  me  !  "  said  she,  trembling 
all  over.     "I  was  so  frightened." 

"Forgive  you.  dearest?  Why,  you 
know  a  bite  from  you  is  sweeter  to  me 
than  a  kiss  from  any  other  woman.  It, 
was  rapturous.  Bite  me  again,  love ; 
scratch   me;    beat   me.     Sweet,   darling 


Nelly,  teach  a  brute  and  ruffian  to  dan? 
to  discipline  his  lovely  queen." 

"No,  no.  I  won't  touch  you.  Yen 
don't  love  me." 

"Not  love  you?  Ah!  cruel  Nelly! 
What  man  ever  loved  a  woman  as  I 
love  you  ? " 

"  Give  me  a  proof  ;  some  better  proof 
than  locking  me  up  in  that  horrid 
hole." 

••  Any  proof  you  like." 

■•  Take  me  on  shore.  I'm  not  a  sailor; 
and  I  begin  to  pine  for  the  land." 

"  Of  course  you  do,"  said  Laxton,  who 
was  now  all  indulgence.  "  Choose  your 
land  at  ouee.  There's  Australia  to  lee- 
ward." 

••  Yes.  six  thousand  miles.  Let  us  go 
ink  lea  together,  dear. 
fresh  gal  hered." 

••  The  desire  is  nal  ural,"  said  Laxtons 
arse  making  life  sweet  to  a  refrac- 
tory child.  ••  ['11  go  on  deck  and  alter 
her  course  directly.  By-the-by,  where 
did  thai  Castor  say  1  should  lind 
him  ?  " 

Thus,  even  in  her  deplorable  condition, 

and  just  lei  out  of  prison,  did  a  terrified 
but  masterly  woman  manipulate  her 
maniac. 

But  what  she  endured  in  the  course  of 
a  very  few  days  was  enough  to  unhinge  a 
lady  for  life.  Laxton  took  to  brooding, 
and  often  passed  his  hand  over  his  brow 
with  a  weird,  terrified  look.  Then  she 
watched  him  with  terror.  On  deck  he 
went  into  furies  about  the  mosl  trifling 
things,  and  threatened  his  best  seamen 
with   the   cat. 

Ellen  could  hear  his  voice  raging  above, 
ami  sat  trembling  as  his  step  came  down 
the  ladder  after  these  explosions.  But  at 
the  cabin  door  he  deposited  violence,  and 
his  mania  look  another  turn.  He  disci- 
plined her  every  day,  and  it  seemed  to  cool 
him.  She  made  no  resistance,  and  they 
conversed  amicably  on  different  sides  of 
the  prison,  she  admitting  that  discipline 
was  good  for  her  mind. 

After  a  time  she  would  say.  "  Edward, 
I'm  sorry  to  say  this  contracted  position 
pains  my  limbs." 

"We  must  provide  for  that.     I'll  build 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


211 


another  yacht,  with  more  room  in  it — for 
everything." 

"Do,  dear;  and,  meantime,  I  am  afraid 
I  must  ask  you  to  let  me  out." 

"  Oh,  by  all  means.  Everything  must 
give  way  to  your  comfort." 

Unfortunately,  Mr.  Laxton,  as  his  rea- 
son became  weaker,  set  up  a  spy ;  and 
this  fellow  wormed  out  that  one  of  the 
crew  had  seen  Castor  take  a  letter  on  the 
sly  from  Mrs.  Laxton.  This  upset  his 
mind  altogether.  He  burst  in  upon  her, 
looking  fearful.  "So  you  write  love- 
letters  to  strangers,  do  you  ?  "  he  roared. 

"  No,  no.     Who  dares  say  so  ?  " 

"  Who  dares  deny  it  ?  You  were  seen 
to  give  one  to  that  Castor,  a  man  you 
had  only  spoken  to  once,  you  false- 
hearted, adulterous  hussy  !  " 

"It  was  only  a  letter  to  my  father." 

"  Liar  !  it  was  a  love-letter.  And  that 
Greaves  couldn't  show  his  face,  but 
you  must  unveil  to  him. — Damnation  ! — 
There  !  you  are  driving  me  mad.  But 
you  shall  not  escape,  nor  your  paramours 
elect.  I  know  where  to  find  them;  and 
you  I've  got." 

The  poor  creatm-e  began  to  shiver. 
"I  am  full  of  faults,"  she  whimpered. 
"Discipline  me,  dear.  You  will  mend 
me  in  time." 

"No,  Judas  !  "  roared  the  madman. 
"I  have  disciplined  you  in  vain.  Disci- 
pline !  it  is  wasted  on  such  a  character. 
I  must  try  extinction." 

"  What,  would  you  kill  me,  Edward  ?  " 

"  Dead  as  a  herring." 

"  God  have  mercy  on  me  !  " 

"  That's  His  affair ;  mine  is  to  see  that 
you  deceive  and  delude  no  more  able 
navigators,  and  drive  them  mad.  But 
don't  you  think  I'm  going  to  shed  your 
blood.  I'm  too  fond  of  you,  traitress — 
viper  —  hussy  —  demon  of  deceit.  And 
don't  you  think  you  shall  die  alone.  No. 
You  shall  perish  with  your  Castor  and 
your  Greaves,  cursed  triumvirate.  I 
know  where  to  And  them  both.  This 
very  day  I'll  catch  them,  and  lash  them 
to  the  furniture,  scuttle  my  beloved 
schooner,  and  set  the  water  bubbling 
slowly  up  till  it  sucks  you  all  three 
down  to  the  bottom.     Sit  down  on  that 


ottoman,  if  3*ou  please,  loveliest  and 
wickedest   of  all   God's  creatures." 

••  I  will  not.  I  will  scream  if  you  lay 
a  hand  on  me." 

"In  that  case,"  said  he,  "you  will 
drive  me  to  a  thing  I  del  est.  and  that  is 
violence."     And  he  drew  out  a  revolver. 

Then  she  put  up  her  quivering  hands, 
and,  pale  and  quaking  in  every  limb,  sub- 
mitted. She  sat  down  on  the  ottoman, 
and  he  produced  some  gold  cord  and  fine 
silk  cord.  With  the  silk  he  tied  her  hair 
most  artistically  to  the  table,  and  with 
the  gold  cord  he  bound  her  hands  behind 
her  back,  and  reduced  her  to  utter  help- 
lessness. This  done  with  great  care  and 
dexterity,  he  bade  her  observe,  with  a 
sneer,  that  his  revolver  was  not  loaded. 
He  loaded  it  and  another  before  her  eyes, 
put  them  in  his  pocket,  locked  the  cabin, 
and  went  on  deck,  leaving  her  more  dead 
than  alive. 


PART   IV. 

All  this  time  the  schooner  had  been 
running  thirteen  knots  an  hour  before  a 
southwest  breeze,  and  Laxton  soon  saw 
a  port  under  his  lee.  with  many  ships  at 
anchor.  The  sight  fired  his  poor  brain  ; 
he  unfurled  two  black  pennants  with  a 
white  head  and  crossed  bones,  one  at  each 
of  his  mastheads,  and  flew  a  similar  en- 
sign at  his  main-peak,  and  so  stood  in  for 
the  anchorage,  like  a  black  kite  swooping 
into  a  poultry -yard. 

Greaves  soon  came  to  from  his  fit ;  but 
he  had  a  racking  pain  across  the  brow, 
and  the  doctor  dreaded  brain-fever.  How- 
ever, a  violent  bleeding  relieved  the  suf- 
ferer, and  Nature,  relenting,  sent  this 
much-enduring  man  a-  long,  heavy  sleep, 
whence  he  awoke  with  an  even  pulse,  but 
fell  into  a  sullen,  dogged  state  of  mind, 
sustained  only  by  some  vague  and  not 
very  reasonable  hope  of  vengeance. 

But  now   the   ladies  interfered  ;   from 


212 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


one  to  another  they  had  picked  up  some 
of  his  story.  He  was  the  one  hero  of  ro- 
mance in  the  ship ;  and,  his  ill-luck, 
bodily  and  mental,  before  their  eyes,  their 
hearts  melted  with  pity,  and  they  came 
to  the  rescue.  However  timid  a  single 
lady  may  be,  four  can  find  courage,  when 
acting  in  concert.  They  visited  him  in 
his  cabin  in  pairs  :  they  made  him  in  one 
day.  by  division  of  labor,  a  fine  cloth  shoe 
for  his  bad  fool  :  they  petted  him,  and 
poured  consolation  on  him:  and  one  of 
them.  Mrs.  Genera]  Meredith,  who  had  a 
mellow,  sympathetic  voice,  after  beating 

Coyly  about  the  bush  a  bit.  wormed  his 
whole  story  out  of  him.  and  instantlj  told 
it  to  the  oi  hers,  and  they  were  quite  happy 
the  resl  of  the  voyage,  having  a  real  live 
love  story  to  talk  over.  Mrs,  Meredith 
gave  him  her  address  at  Hong-Kong,  and 
made  him  promise  to  call  on  her. 

At  last  they  reached  that  port,  and  the 
passengers  dispersed.  Greaves  weir,  on 
board  tlir  Centaur,  and  was  heartily  wel- 
comed. 

He  reported  his  arrival  to  the  admiral, 
ami  fell  at  oner  into  the  routine  of  duty. 
He  intended  to  confide  in  his  good-nut  ured 
friend  the  second  mate,  hut  was  deterred 
by  hearing  that  a  now  steam-corvette 
was  about  to  be  dispatched  to  the  island 
to  look  after  pirates.  She  was  to  be  ready 
in  less  1  han  a  month. 

Noi  Inn--  was  more  likely  than  that  the 
admiral  would  give  the  command  to  his 
flair-lieutenant .  Indeed,  the  chances  were 
five  to  one.  So  Greaves  said  to  himself, 
"I'll  hold  my  tongue  about  that  madman, 
and  then  if  I  have  the  good  luck  to  fall 
in  with  him.  1  can  pretend  to  take  him 
for  a  pirate,  and  board  him,  and  rescue 
her."" 

So  he  held  his  tongue,  and  in  due  course 
it  was  notified  to  him  that  he  was  to  com- 
mand the  corvette,  as  soon  as  her  arma- 
ment should  be  complete. 

It  did  not  escape  Lieutenant  Greaves 
that  the  mad  cruiser  might  be  cruising  in 
Polynesia  while  he  was  groping  the 
Chinese  islands  with  his  corvette.  Still 
there  was  a  chance  :  and  as  it  seemed  the 
only  one,  his  sad  heart  clung  to  it.  In 
England,  time  and  a  serious  malady  had 


closed  his  wound ;  hut  the  sight  of  Ellen's 
face,  pale  and  unhappy,  and  the  posses- 
sion of  her  letter,  which  proved  that  she 
feared  her  husband  more  than  she  loved 
him.  had  opened  his  wound  again,  and 
renewed  all  his  love  and  all  his  pain. 

But  while  he  was  waiting  and  sickening 
with  impatience  at  the  delays  in  fitting 
out  his  corvette  for  service,  an  incident 
occurred  that  struck  all  his  plans  aside  in 
a  moment,  and  taught  him  how  impossi- 
ble it  is  for  man  to  foresee  what  a  single 
day  may  bring  forth. 

Admiral  Hervey  was  on  the  quarter- 
deck of  the  Centaur,  and  a  group  of  his 
officers  conversing  to  leeward  of  him,  at 
a  respectful  distance,  when  suddenly  a 
schooner,  making  for  the  port,  hoisted  a 
black  flag,  with  death's-head  and  cross- 
bones  at  her  mastheads  and  her  main- 
peak,  and  came  howling  in.  She  steered 
right  for  the  Centaur,  just  shaved  her 
stern,  ran  on  about  a  cable's  length,  hove 
up  m  the  wind,  and  anchored  between 
the  flagship  and  the  port  she  was 
watching. 

It  really  looked  as  if  this  comic  pirate 
meant  to  pour  his  little  broadside  into 
the  mighty  Centaur,  and  get  blown  out 
of  the  water  in  a  moment. 

Then  Greaves  began  to  ask  himself 
whether  he  was  right  not  to  tell  the  ad- 
miral all  about  this  vessel.  But  while  he 
hesitated,  thai  worthy  did  not.  He 
-ruined  at  t  lie  absurdity  of  1  he  thing, 
hut  lie  frowned  at  the  impudence.  "This 
won't  do."  he  said.  Then,  turning  to- 
w  am  his  officers,  "  Lieutenant  Greaves  !  " 

"Sir." 

"Take  an  armed  party,  and  bring  the 
master  of  that  schooner  to  me." 

••  Ay.  sir." 

In  a  vevy  few  minutes,  Lieutenant 
Greaves,  with  two  boats  containing 
armed  sailors  and  marines,  and  the 
union-jack  flying,  put  off  from  the  Cen- 
taur and  boarded  the  schooner. 

At  sight  of  his  cocked  hat.  the  schoon- 
er's men  slunk  forward  and  abandoned 
their  commander.  He  sat  aft,  on  a  bar- 
rel of  gunpowder,  a  revolver  in  each  hand, 
and  vociferated. 

Greaves  stepped  up,  and  fixed  his  eye 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


213 


on  him.  He  was  raving  mail,  and  dan- 
gerous. Greaves  ordered  two  stout  fel- 
lows to  go  round  him,  while  he  advanced. 
Then,  still  fixing  his  eye  on  the  maniac, 
he  so  mesmerized  him  that  he  did  not  no- 
tice the  other  assailants.  At  one  mo- 
ment they  pinned  him  behind,  and 
Greaves  bounded  on  him  like  a  cat. 
Bang  ! — bang  ! — went  two  shots,  plow- 
ing the  deck,  and  Laxton  was  secured 
and  tied,  and  bundled,  shrieking,  curs- 
ing, and  foaming,  on  board  one  of  the 
boats,  and  taken  to  the  flagship. 

Meantime.  Greaves  stepped  forward. 
and  said  a  few  words  to  the  men  :  "  Now 
then.  Jack,  do  you  want  to  get  into 
trouble  ?  " 

The  men's  caps  went  off  in  a  moment, 
"No.  your  honor  ;  it  ain't  our  fault."' 

"Then  strike  those  ridiculous  colors. 
and  fly  your  union-jack  at  the  main-peak  ; 
this  schooner  is  under  royal  command  for 
the  present." 

"Ay,  ay.  sir." 

This  was  done  in  a  moment,  and  mean- 
time Greaves  ran  down  the  companion 
ladder,  and  knocked  at  the  cabin  door. 

No  answer. 

Knocked  again,  and  listened. 

He  heard  a  faint  moan. 

He  drew  back  as  far  as  he  could,  ran 
furiously  at  the  door,  ami  gave  it  such  a 
tremendous  kick  with  his  sound  foot  that 
the  lock  gave  way,  and  the  door  burst 
open. 

Then  the  scared  Ellen  saw  a  cocked  hat 
in  the  doorway,  and  the  next  moment  her 
old  lover  was  by  her  side,  untying  her 
hair,  and  cutting  the  ligatures  carefully, 
with  tender  ejaculations  of  pity. 

"  Oh,  Arthur  !  "  she  sobbed.  "  Ah  !  go 
away — he  will  kill  us  both." 

"No,  no;  don't  3-011  be  frightened.  He 
is  under  arrest;  and  I  command  the 
schooner,  by  the  admiral's  orders.  Don't 
tremble  so,  darling  ;  it  is  all  over.  Why, 
you  are  under  the  guns  of  the  flagship, 
and  you  have  got  me.  Oh,  my  poor  El- 
len !  did  ever  I  think  to  see  you  used  like 
this?" 

So  then  they  had  a  cry  together;  and 
he  said  everything  in  the  world  to  com- 
fort her. 


But  it  was  not  to  be  done  in  a  moment. 
The  bonds  were  gone,  but  the  outrage  re- 
mained. "  I  want  a  woman,"  she  cried, 
and  hid  her  face.  "  Arthur,  bring  me  a 
woman." 

•■That  I  will."  said  he;  and  seeing 
paper  and  envelopes  on  a  table,  he  dashed 
off  a  line  to  the  admiral  : 

'•  Lady  on  board  the  schooner  in  great 
distress.  May  I  send  her  ashore  to  female 
friends  ?  " 

He  sent  the  remaining  boat  off  with 
this,  and  the  answer  came  back  directly  : 

"Act  according  to  your  discretion.  You 
can  go  ashore." 

As  soon  as  he  got  this,  he  told  Mrs. 
Laxton  he  would  take  her  to  Mrs.  Gen- 
eral-Meredith, or  invite  that  lady  on 
board. 

Mrs.  Laxton  said  she  felt  unable  to 
move  ;  so  then  Greaves  dispatched  a  mid- 
shipman m  the  boat,  with  a  hasty  line, 
and  assisted  Mrs.  Laxton  to  the  sofa,  and 
holding  her  hand,  begged  her  to  dismiss 
all  her  fears. 

She  was  too  shaken,  however,  to  do 
that,  and  sat  crying  and  quivering;  she 
seemed  ashamedtoo,  and  humiliated.  So 
this  honest  fellow,  thinking  she  would 
perhaps  be  glad  if  he  left  her,  placed  two 
marines  at  her  cabin  door,  to  give  her 
confidence,  and  went  on  deck,  and  gave 
some  orders,  which  were  promptly  obeyed. 

But  very  soon  he  was  sent  for  to  the 
cabin.  "Pray  don't  desert  me,"  said 
Mrs.  Laxton.  "The  sight  of  you  gives 
me  courage."  After  a  while  she  said, 
"Ah.  you  return  good  for  evil." 

"  Don't  talk  like  that,"  said  he.  "Wiry, 
I  am  the  happiest  fellow-  afloat  now.  I 
got  your  letter.  But  I  never  thought  I 
should  be  so  happy  as  to  rescue  you." 

"Happy!"  said  she.  "I  shall  never 
be  happy  again.  And  I  don't  believe  you 
will.  Pray  don't  forget  I  am  a  married 
woman." 

"  I  don't  forget  that." 

"Married  to  a  madman.  I  hope  no 
harm  will  come  to  him." 


214 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


"  I  will  take  care  no  harm  comes  to 
you." 

Then  Greaves,  who  had  read  no  French 
novels,  and  respected  the  marriage  tie, 
became  more  distant  and  respectful,  and 
to  encourage  her,  said,  "Mrs.  Laxton, 
the  lady  I  have  sent  to,  admired  you  on 
board  the  ship,  and  I  am  sure,  if  she  gets 
my  letter,  she  will  do  more  for  you  than 
a  poor  fellow  like  me  can,  now  you  are  out 
of  danger.  She  is  a  general's  wife,  and 
was  very  kind  to  me." 

"You  arc  very  good  and  thoughtful," 
said  Mrs.  Laxton. 

Then  there  was  an  awkward  silence 
ami  it  was  broken  by  the  arrival  of  the 
boal .  wit  h  ( fceneral  Meredil  b  and  his  wife. 

Greaves     goi     them     on     board     the 

sch r.  s] k  bands  with  the  lady,  and 

proposed    to    her    to    see    Mrs.     Laxton 

■•  You  are  right,"  said  she. 

Greaves  showed  her  to  the  cabin:  and 
1  don't  know  all  thai  passed,  hut  m  a 
very  short  time  these  Ladies,  who  had 
never  me1  bu1  once,  were  kissing  e:  ch 
nt  her,  with  w  e1  eyes. 

Mrs.  Meredith  insisted  en  taking  her 
new  friend  home  with  ber.  Mrs.  Laxtou 
acquiesced  joyfully  ;  and  for  once  a  baskei 
of  lady's  clothes  was  packed  in  five  min- 
utes. 

The  boat  pul  off  again,  and  Greaves 
looked  sad.  So  Mrs.  Meredith  sinned  to 
him,  and  said,  "You  know  where  to  find 
us.     Don't  tie  long." 

Greaves  watched  the  boat  till  it  was 
lost  among  the  small  shipping,  then 
placed  the  midshipman  in  charge,  and 
went  at  once  on  hoard  the  flagship. 

Here  he  heard  the  master  of  the 
schooner  had  been  taken  on  the  quarter- 
deck, and  requested,  civilly  enough,  to 
explain  his  extraordinary  conduct;  but 
he  had  sworn  at  the  admiral,  and  called 
him  an  old  woman  :  wiiereupon  the  ad- 
miral had  not  shown  any  anger,  but  had. 
said  "  Clap  him  in  irons."  concluding  that 
was  what  he  expected  and  desired. 

Then  this  doughty  sailor,  Greaves,  who 
had  been  going  to  kill  his  rival  at  sight, 
etc..  was  seized  with  compunction  the 
moment   that  rival   was  powerless.     He  j 


went  boldly  to  the  admiral,  and  asked 
leave  to  give  information.  He  handed 
him  Mrs.  Laxton's  letter. 

"Oh,"  said  the  admiral,  •■then  he  is 
mad." 

"As  a  March  hare,  sir.  And  I'm 
afraid  putting  him  in  irons  will  make 
him  worse.  It  is  a  case  for  a  lunatic 
asylum." 

••  You  won't  find  one  here  ;  but  the 
marine  hospital  has  a  ward  for  lunatics. 
1  know  thai,  for  we  had  to  send  a  foretop- 
man  there  last  week.  I'll  give  you  an 
order,  and  you  can  take  him  ashore  at 
once." 

Then  Greaves  actually  took  the  poor 
wretch  who  had  wrecked    his  happiness, 

Mid  was  new  himself  a  wreck,  on  hoard  a 
boat .  and  convej  ed  him  to  the  hospital, 
and  instructed  the  manager  not  to  show 
him  tiny  unnecessary  severity,  bu1  to 
guard  against   self-destruction. 

Then  hi'  went  directly  to  Mrs.  Meredith 
and  reported  what  lie  had  done. 

.Mrs.  Laxton,  in  spite  of  all  remon- 
strance, would  go  and  see  her  husband 
1  hat  nighl  .  hut  she  found  him  in  a  si  rait  - 
waistcoat,  foaming  and  furious,  and  using 
such  language,  she  was  obliged  to  retire 
horror-s1  ricken. 

About  live  in  the  morning  he  burst  a 
blood-vessel  in  the  brain,  and  at  noon 
next  day  all  his  troubles  were  over. 

.Mrs.  Laxton  mourned  him.  and  buried 
him.  and  Greaves  held  aloof,  not  liking 
to    gO    near    her  jUSt    now;    for  he  was  too 

frank  and  simple  to  pretend  he  shared 
her  grief.  Yet  he  had  sense  enough  to 
understand  that,  at  such  a  time,  a  gener- 
ous spirit  remembers  only  a  man's  good 
qualities:  and  Laxton  had  many;  but, 
even  when  he  married  Ellen  Ap  Rice,  the 
•rein  him  of  that  malady  which 
destroyed  him  at.  last. 

However,  if  Greaves  was  out  of  the 
widow's  sight,  he  was  not  out  of  her  mind, 
for  Mrs.  Meredith  knew  his  whole  tale, 
and  told  her  how  he  had  gone  to  Tenbj-, 
and  had  taken  her  marriage  to  heart, 
and  had  been  at  death's  door  in  London. 

At  last  Greaves  called,  having  the  ex- 
cuse of  a  message  from  the  admiral.  He 
wished  to  know  if  Mrs.  Laxton  would  sell 


THE   JILT.— A    YARN. 


215 


eight  of  her  guns  to  the  government,  and 
also  allow  her  sailors  to  be  drafted  into 
his  ships,  all  but  two,  that  number  be- 
ing' sufficient  to  take  care  of  her  vessel 
in  port. 

Mrs.  Laxton  said,  •' I  shall  do  nothing 
of  the  kind,  without  your  advice,  Arthur 
— Mr.  Greaves.  Why,  how  am  I  to  get 
home?  " 

Then  Greaves  advised  her  to  sell  the 
guns,  for  they  were  worse  than  useless  ; 
but  to  part  with  the  men  only  on  condi- 
tion that  the  admiral  would  man  the 
schooner,  "when  required,"  with  new 
hands,  that  had  never  played  tricks  at  sea 
under  her  late  commander. 

Greaves  called  once  or  twice  in  the 
course  of  this  negotiation,  and  thought 
Ellen  had  never  looked  so  lovely  as  in  her 
widow's  cap.  But  he  felt  bound  to  abstain 
from  making  love,  though  he  was  burst- 
ing with  it,  and  both  ladies  saw  it,  and 
pretended  not. 

But  one  day  he  came  to  them  in  great 
dismay,  and  told  them  the  guns  had  been 
bought  for  the  steam-corvette  he  was  to 
command,  and  she  would  be  ready  in  a 
week,  and  he  should  have  to  go  on  his 
cruise.  "I  am  very  unfortunate,"  said 
he. 

The  words  were  scarcely  out  of  his 
mouth,  when  his  friend,  the  second  lieu- 
tenant, was  announced.  "Beg  pardon, 
ladies ;  but  here's  a  letter  from  the  ad- 
miral, for  Greaves  ;  and  we  all  hope  it's 
promotion." 

He  produced  an  enormous  letter,  and, 
sure  enough,  Lieutenant  Greaves  was 
now  a  commander.  "  Hurrah  !  *'  shouted 
the  second  lieutenant,  and  retired. 

"  This  would  have  made  me  very 
happy,  once,"  said  Greaves;  then  cast 
a  despairing  look  at  Ellen,  and  went 
off,  all  in  a  hurry,  not  to  break  down. 

Then  Mrs.  Laxton  had  a  cry  round  her 
friend's  neck. 

But  next  day  the  same  Greaves  came 
in  all  joyous.  "1  was  a  fool,"  said  he. 
'•I  forgot  the  rule  of  the  service.  An 
admiral  can't  have  two  commanders. 
That  fine  fellow,  who  came  after  me 
with  the  news,  is  lieutenant,  in  my 
place,  and  I'm  to  go  home  for  orders." 


"Oh,  I'm  so  glad!"  said  Ellen. 
"When  must  you  go?" 

"  Oh,  I  dare  say  I  might  stay  another 
fortnight  or  so.  When  are  you  going 
home,  Mrs.  Laxton  ?  " 

"  The  very  first  opportunity ;  and  Mrs. 
Meredith  is  to  go  with  me.  Won't  it  be 
nice  ?  ' ' 

"Yes."  said  he;  "but  it  would  be 
nicer  if  I  could  be  third  man.  But  no 
such  luck  for  me,  I  suppose." 

Those  two  ladies  now  put  their  heads 
together,  and  boarded  the  admiral.  He 
knew  Mrs.  Meredith ;  but  was  a  little 
surprised,  though  too  true  a  tar  to  be 
displeased.  They  were  received  in  his 
cabin,  and  opened  their  business. 

Mrs.  Laxton  wanted  to  go  home  im- 
mediately in  her  schooner,  and  she  had 
no  crew. 

"  Well,  madam,  you  are  not  to  suffer 
for  your  civility  to  us.  We  will  man 
your  schooner  for  you  in  forty-eight 
hours." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  admiral !  But  the 
worst  of  it  is  I  have  no  one  to  com- 
mand her." 

"  No  sailing-master  ?  " 

"No;  my  poor  husband  sailed  her 
himself." 

'•  Ay,  I  remember,  poor  fellow.  Be- 
sides"  (looking  at  the  beautiful  widow), 
"  I  would  not  trust  you  to  a  sailing- 
master." 

"  What  we  thought,  admiral,  was, 
that  as  we  gave  up  the  guns  and  the 
sailors,  perhaps  you  would  be  so  kind 
as  to  lend  us  an  officer." 

"What,  out  of  Her  Majesty's  fleet? 
I  could  not  do  that.  But,  now  I  think 
of  it,  I've  got  the  very  man  for  you. 
Here's  Commander  Greaves  going  home 
on  his  promotion.  He  is  as  good  an 
officer  as  any  on  the  station." 

"  Oh,  admiral,  if  you  think  so  well 
of  him,  he  will  be  a  godsend  to  poor 
us." 

"  Well,  then,  he  is  at  your  service, 
ladies;  and  you  could  not  do  better." 

Greaves  was  a  proud  and  joyful  man. 
"My  luck  has  turned,"  said  he. 

He  ballasted  the  schooner  and  pro- 
visioned her,  at  Mrs.  Laxton's  expense, 


216 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


who  had  received  a  large  sum  of  money 
for  her  guns.  The  two  ladies  occupied 
the  magnificent  cabin.  He  took  a  hum- 
bler berth,  weighed  anchor,  and  away 
for  old  England. 

I  shall  not  give  the  reader  any  nautical 
details  of  another  voyage,  but  a  brief 
sketch  of  things  distinct  from  naviga- 
tion that  happened  on  board. 

Mrs.  Laxton  was  coy  for  some  days; 
then  friendly;  then  affectionate:  and, 
off  the  Cape,  tyrannical.  "  You  are 
not  the  Arthur  Greaves  I  remember,'' 
said  she;  "he  had  not  a  horrid  beard." 

"  Why.  I  suffered  for  not  having  one," 
said  la'. 

"  What  I  mean,"  said  she,  "you  do  not 
awaken  in  me  the  associations  you  would 
but  for  that — appendage." 

"You  wish  those  associations  awak- 
ened ? " 

••  1  don't  know.     Do  you  ?  " 

•■  Indeed  1  do." 

••Then  le1  me  see  you  as  you  used  to 
be — Arthur." 

The  beard  came  off  nexl  morning. 

••Ah!  "said  Mrs.  Laxton,  and.  to  do 
tier  justice,  she  fell  a  little  compunction 
at  her  tyranny,  and  disposed  to  n 
him  to  his  loss.  She  was  so  kind  to  him 
thai .  at  Maderia.  he  asked  her  to  marry 
him. 

"To  be  suit  1  will."  said  she — "some 
day.     Why,  1  believe  we  are  engaged." 

'•  1  am  sure  of  it."  said  he, 

••Then,  of  course,  I  must  many  you. 
Bui  there's  one     Littli — condition." 

"Must  I  grow  a  heard  again  ?  " 

"No.  The  condition  is — I  am  afraid 
you  won't  like  it." 

"Perhaps  not  ;  but  I  don't  care  if  I 
am  to  be  paid  by  marrying  you." 

"  Well,  then,  it  i. — you  must  leave  the 
service." 

"  Leave  the  service  !  You  cannot  be 
serious  ?  What,  just  when  I  am  on  the 
road  to  the  red  flag  at  the  fore  !  Besides, 
how  are  we  to  live  ?  I  have  no  other 
means  at  present,  and  I  am  not  going  to 
wait  for  dead  men's  shoes." 

"Papa  is  rich,  dear,  and  I  can  sell  the 
yacht  for  a  trading  vessel.  She  is  worth 
ten  thousand  pounds,  I'm  told." 


"  Oh,  then,  I'm  to  be  idle,  and  eat  my 
wife's  bread." 

'•  And  butter,  dear.  I  promise,  it  shall 
not  be  dry  bread." 

"  I  prefer  a  crust,  earned  like  a  man." 

••You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you 
won't  leave  the  service  to  oblige  me, 
sir  ?  " 

'•  Anything  else  you  like  ;  but  I  cannot 
leave  the  service." 

"Then  I  can't  marry  you,  my  sailor 
bold,"  chanted  the  tyrannical  widow,  and 
ii-t  ired  to  her  cabin. 

She  told  Mrs.  Meredith,  and  that  lady 
scolded  her  and  lectured  her  lill  she 
pouted  and  was  very  nearly  crying. 

However,  she  vouchsafed  an  explana- 
tion— "One  requires  change.  1  have  been 
the  slave  of  one  man.  and  now  1  must  be 
the  tyrant  of  another." 

Mrs.  Meredith  suggested  thai  rational 
Freedom  would  be  a  sufficienl  change  from 
her  condil  ion  under  Laxton. 

"  Rational  freedom  !"said  the  widow, 
contemptuously;  ••that*  is  neither  one 
thing  nor  the  other.  I  will  be  a  slave  or 
a  tyrant .  He  will  give  in.  as  he  did  a  bout 
the  beard,  if  you  don't  interfere.  I'll 
be  cross  one  day.  and  affectionate  the 
next .  and  all  sweetness  the  next .  He  will 
soon  find  out  which  he  likes  the  best,  and 
he  will  give  in.  poor  dear  fellow." 

1  suppose  that  in  a  voyage  round  the 
world  these  arts  might  have  conquered; 
hut  they  sighted  the  Lizard,  without 
-  3  ielding,  and  both  were  gel  ting 
unhappy  ;  so  Mrs.  Meredith  got  them  to 
together,  and  proposed  she  should  marry 
him,  and  if.  in  one  year  after  marriage, 
she  insisted  on  his  leaving  the  service,  he 
\\  oiild  be  hound  in  honor  to  do  so. 

"I'm  afraid  that  comes  to  the  same 
thing,"  said  Greaves. 

"  No.  it  does  not,"  said  Mrs.  Meredith. 
"  Long  before  a  jrear  she  will  have  given 
up  her  nonsensical  notion  that  wives  can 
be  happy  tyrannizing  over  the  man  they 
love,  and  you  will  be  master." 

'■  Aha  !  "  said  Mrs.  Laxton.  "  we  shall 
see." 

This  being  settled,  Ellen  suddenly  ap- 
peared with  her  engaged  ring  on  her  fin- 
ger, and  was  so  loving  that  Greaves  was 


THE    JILT.— A    YARN. 


217 


almost  iu  heaven.  They  landed  Mrs.  Mere- 
dith, with  all  the  honors,  at  Plymouth  and 
telegraphed  the  mayor  of  Tenby.  Next 
day  they  sailed  into  the  Welsh  harbor, 
and  landed.  They  were  both  received 
with  open  arms  by  the  mayor  and  old 
Dewar ;  and  it  was  the  happiest  house  in 
Wales. 

Ellen  stayed  at  home:  but  Greaves 
lived  on  board  the  ship  till  the  wedding- 
day. 

Ellen,  still  on  the  doctrine  of  opposition, 
would  be  cried  in  church,  because  the  last 
time  she  had  been  married  by  license,  and, 
as  she  had  sailed  away  from  church  the 
first  time,  she  would  travel  by  land,  and  no 
further  than  St.  David's. 

They  were  soon  back  at  Tenby  ;  and  she 
ordered  Greaves  to  take  her  on  board  the 
yacht,  with  a  black  leather  bag. 

"  Take  that  into  the  cabin,  dear,"  said 
she. 

Then  she  took  some  curious  kej-s  out  of 
her  pocket,  and  opened  a  secret  place 
that  nobody  would  have  discovered.  She 
showed  him  a  great  many  bags  of  gold 
and  a  pile  of  bank-notes.  "  We  are  not 
so  very  poor,  Arthur,"  said  she.  "You 
will  have  a  little  butter  to  your  bread. 
You  know  I  promised  you  should.  And 
there  is  money  settled  on  me  ;  and  he  left 
me  a  great  deal  of  money,  besides,  when 
he  was  in  his  senses,  poor  fellow.  I  could 
not  tell  before  ;  or  papa  would  have  had 
it  settled  on  me,  and  that  lowers  a  hus- 
band. Being  hen-pecked  a  very  little — 
quite  privately  —  does  not,"  said  she, 
cajolingly. 

Greaves  was  delighted,  within  certain 
limits.  "  I  am  glad  to  find  you  are  rich," 
said  he.  "But  I  hope  you  won't  make 
me  leave  the  service.  Money  is  not  every- 
thing." 

"I  promise  never  to  discharge  you  from 
my  service,  dear.  I  know  your  value  too 
well." 

They  spent  a  happy  fortnight  in  Tenby 
as  man  and  wife. 

One  day  they    walked    on    the   south 


sands,  and  somehow  round  themselves  in 
Merlin's  Cave. 

Here  Ellen  sat,  with  her  head  on  that 
faithful  shoulder,  and  he  looking  down  on 
her  with  inexpressible  tenderness. 

Presently  she  gave  a  scream,  and 
started  up,  and  was  out  of  the  cavern  in 
a  moment.  He  followed  her,  a  little 
alarmed.     "  What  is  the  matter?  " 

"  Oh,  Arthur,  a  dream  !  Such  a  dread- 
ful one  !  I  dreamed  I  played  you  false, 
and  married  a  gentleman  with  a  beard, 
and  lie  was  mad,  and  took  me  all  round 
the  world,  and  ill-used  me,  and  tied  me  by 
the  hair,  and  you  rescued  me  :  and  then 
I  found,  too  late,  it  was  you  I  esteemed 
and  loved,  and  so  we  were  parted  forever. 
Oh,  what  a  dream  !    And  so  vivid  !  " 

"How  extraordinary!  "  said  he.  "Would 
you  believe  that  I  dreamed  that  I  lost 
you  in  that  very  way.  and  was  awfully 
ill,  and  went  to  sea  again,  and  found  you 
lashed  to  a  table  by  your  beautiful  hair, 
and  lost  to  me  forever?  " 

"  Poor  Arthur  !  What  a  blessing  it  was 
only  a  dream  !  " 

Soon  after  this  little  historical  arrange- 
ment they  settled  in  London ;  and  Mrs. 
Greaves,  being  as  beautiful  as  ever,  and 
extremely  rich,  exerted  her  powers  of 
pleasing  to  advance  her  husband's  inter- 
ests. The  consequence  is,  he  remains  in 
the  service,  but  is  at  present  employed 
in  the  Education  Department.  She  no 
longer  says  he  must  leave  the  service ;  her 
complaint  now  is  that  she  loves  him  too 
well  to  govern  him  properly.  But  she  is 
Arm  in  this,  that  if  he  takes  a  command 
she  shall  go  with  him  ;  and  she  will  do  it, 
too. 

Her  ripe  beauty  is  dazzling;  she  is 
known  to  be  rich.  The  young  fellows  look 
from  her  to  her  husband,  and  say,  "What 
on  earth  could  she  have  seen  in  that  man 
to  marry  him  ?  " 

I  wonder  how  many  of  these  young 
swells  will  vie  with  him  in  earnest,  and 
earn  a  lovety  woman  both  by  doing-  and 
suffering  ? 


218 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


THE    KINDLY   JEST. 


There  appear  to  be  at  present  two 
great  divisions  of  humorous  wit — the 
repartee  and  the  practical  joke.  Both 
these  have  an  aggressive  character.  To 
begin  with,  the  repartee — it  is  generally 
a  slap  in  the 

A  few  years  ago  the  country  possessed 
a  master  of  repartee,  Mr.  Douglas  Jer- 
rold.  Specimens  of  his  style  still  survive 
in  the  memory  of  his  contemporaries.  A 
mediocre  writer,  employed  on  the  sain.' 
subject  as  himself,  said  : 

•■  Yi.it  know,  Jerrold,  you  and  1  are 
rowing  in  the  same  boal  !"  "Yes,"  re- 
plied tin*  wit,    ••  inn    nol    with  the  same 

sculls  !  " 

A noi  her  inferior  art  isl  is  eating  soup  a1 
the  Garrick  Club.  He  praises  it  to  Jer- 
rold,  and  tells  trim  i1  is  calf-tail  soup. 
••  Ay,"  says  Jerrold,  "extremes  meet." 

These  are  strong  specimens  ;  hut  take 
milder  ones,  still  the  aggressive  character 
is  there.  Pecuniary  calamity  overtook  a 
friend  of  Mr.  Edmund  Burke.  Another 
friend  went  to  console  him.  and.  like  Job's 
comforters,  told  him  it  was  all  his  own 
fault. 

••  How  could  you  be  so  unfeeling  ?  "  s;i  id 
iir.  Burke,  when  lie  heard  of  it. 

••  Unfeeling,  sir."  said  the  other  :  "  why. 
I  went  to  him  directly,  and  poured  oil  into 
his  wounds." 

"  Oil  of  vitriol."  says  the  statesman. 

I  need  not  say  that  a  thousand  exam- 
ples of  the  kind  are  to  be  found  in  litera- 
ture. The  witty  Voltaire  receded  with 
admbvable  dexterity  from  good  nature 
into  wit.  He  permitted  himself  to  praise 
some  gentleman  rather  warmly.  His 
hearer  said  : 

"  This  is  very  good  of  you,  for  he  does 
not  speak  of  you  with  any  respect — quite 
the    reverse."      "Ah!"    said    Voltaire. 


••  humanum  est  errare.  Probably  we  are 
both  of  us  mistaken." 

An  observer  of  witty  men  and  their 
sayings,  summed  the  matter  up  as  fol- 
lows:   "  Diseur  de    bon-mots,    mauvais 

caractere." 

Even  where  the  wit  is  without  person- 
ality, it-  does  not  always  lose  its  aggress- 
ive character.  See  how  the  personages 
in  i  he  "School  for  Scandal  "  explain  why 
wit  and  good-nature  are  so  seldom  united. 
The  explanations  arc  not  hitter,  hut  still 
t  hey  arc  biting. 

Now  go  from  this  to  the  practical  joke, 
which  is  ;il\v;iys  nil  attempt  a1  humor. 
|)i>scct  the  practical  joke.     Egotism  and 

a  poverty  Of  real  wit  tempi  sonic  dunce 
to  intlict  moderate  pain  upon  another, 
keeping  well  out  of  it  himself  ;  and,  his 
hem-- out  of  it  and  the  other  being  in  it 
makes  him  feel  humorous;  and  this  really 
favors  the  narrow  theory  of  Hobbes  of 
Malmesbury,  that  " laughter  arises  from 
a  glorying  m  ourselves  at  some  superior- 
ityover  our  neighbor."  The  dull  humor- 
ist- in  this  style  chips  bristles,  and  strews 
them  in  his  friend's  bed,  or  makes  him  up 
what  is  called  an  apple-pie  bed — a  won- 
derful corrupt  ion  of  cap-h-pie.  Meanl  ime, 
his  bed  is  all  right,  and  his  heart  re- 
joices. One  of  these  humorists  put  a 
skeleton  into  a  young  lady's  bed,  down 
in  Somersetshire,  then  retired  softly  and 
awaited  the  result  with  the  idiotic  chuckle 
of  a  dull  dog  who  has  gone  astray  into 
humor.  The  result  was  that  the  lady  fell 
streaming  on  the  floor,  was  taken  up  in- 
sane, and  ended  her  days  in  a  madhouse. 
Another  such  humorist  battened  down 
the  hatches  of  a  small  trading  vessel  in 
the  Thames.  Smoke  was  created  some- 
how in  the  hold  (I  forget  by  what  cause), 
and    the    crew,    consisting  of   four  poor 


THE    KINDLY   JEST. 


219 


wretches,  tried  in  vain  to  escape.  Their 
very  cries  were  stifled,  and,  the  next  day, 
their  smoking-  corpses  were  recovered, 
grim  monuments  of  a  blockhead's 
humor. 

Solomon  has  observed  that  Nature  con- 
tains tremendous  animals.  At  the  head 
of  the  list  he  places  a  couple,  viz.,  a  bear 
robbed  of  her  whelps,  and  an  irritated 
fool.  Leaving-  these  two  terrible  creat- 
ures to  figure  cheek  by  jowl  in  the  sacred 
page,  I  beg  the  third  place  for  a  dull  man 
or  woman  trying  to  be  witty. 

Now,  all  this  is  not  absolutely  neces- 
sary. It  is  more  difficult  to  say  witty 
and  kindly  things  than  witty  and  ill- 
natured  things ;  yet  it  is  within  the 
powers  of  the  human  understanding. 

A  young  lady  walking  in  her  garden 
with  Sydney  Smith  pointed  out  to  him 
an  everlasting  pea,  reported  to  blossom 
beautifully;  "but,"  said  she,  "we  have 
never  been  able  to  bring  it  to  perfection." 
"Then,"  said  the  kindly  wit,  "let  me 
bring  perfection  to  the  pea,"  and  so  led 
her  by  the  hand  to  a  closer  inspection  of 
the  flower. 

Coulon,  a  famous  mimic  in  Louis  XV. 's 
time,  took  off  the  king  as  well  as  his  sub- 
jects. The  king  heard  of  it  and  insisted 
on  seeing  the  imitation.  He  was  not  of- 
fended at  it,  and  gave  Coulon  a  fine  dia- 
mond pin.  Coulon  looks  at  the  pin,  and 
says,  "Coming  to  me,  this  ought  to  be 
paste,  but  coming  from  Your  Majesty 
it  is  naturally  a  diamond."  Is  the 
element  of  wit  extinguished  here  ?  I 
trow  not. 

Frederick  the  Great  disbelieved  in  phy- 
sicians, and  said  that  invalids  died  oftener 
of  their  remedies  than  their  maladies, 
and,  as  the  lancet  was  rife  in  his  day, 
probably  he  was  not  very  far  wrong. 
However,  he  fell  sick,  and  the  weakness 
of  his  body,  I  suppose,  affected  his  mind  : 
so  he  sent  for  a  physician.  Dr.  Zimmer- 
mann  ;  but  at  sight  of  him  his  theory  re- 
vived, and  his  habitual  good  manners  led 
him  to  say  to  Zimmermann,  by  way  of 
greeting,  "  Now,  doctor,  I'll  be  bound  to 
say  you  have  sent  many  an  honest  fellow 
under  ground."  Zimmermann  replied, 
without    hesitation,   "  Not    so    many   as 


Your  Majesty — nor  with  so  much  credit 
to  myself." 

Isn't  that  wit,  if  you  please  ?  Ay,  and 
of  a  very  high  order.  But  it  is  possible 
to  convert  even  the  practical  joke  to 
amiability,  and  to  substitute  the  milk  of 
human  kindness  where  hitherto  men  have 
dealt  in  adulterated  vinegar.  And  of 
this  I  beg  to  offer  an  example. 

A  certain  German  nobleman  provided 
his  son  with  a  tutor,  who  was  to  attend 
closely  to  him,  and  improve  his  mind. 
This  tutor,  it  seems,  took  for  his  ex- 
ample a  certain  predecessor  of  his,  who 
used  to  coach  young  Cyrus  indoors  and 
out ;  and  both  these  tutors,  each  in  his 
own  country  and  his  own  generation,  had 
the  brains  to  see  that  to  educate  a  young- 
fellow  you  must  not  merely  set  him  tasks* 
to  learn  indoors,  and  then  let  him  run 
wild  in  the  open  air,  but  must  accompany 
him  wherever  he  goes,  and  guide  him 
with  your  greater  experience  in  his  prac- 
tical judgment  of  the  various  events  that 
pass  before  his  eyes.  For  how  shall  he 
learn  to  apply  an  experience  which  he 
does  not  really  possess  ?  What  a  boy 
learns  by  rote  is  not  knowledge,  but 
knowledge's  shadow. 

One  day  these  two  came  to  the  side  of 
a  wood,  and  there  they  found  a  tree  half 
felled,  and  a  pair  of  wooden  shoes.  The 
woodman  was  cooling  his  hot  feet  in  a 
neighboring  stream.  The  young  noble- 
man took  up  a  couple  of  pebbles,  and 
said,  "  I'll  put  these  in  that  old  fellow's 
shoes,  and  we'll  see  his  grimaces." 
"Hum!"  says  the  tutor,  "I  don't 
think  you'll  get  much  fun  out  of  that. 
You  see  he's  a  poor  man,  and  probably 
thinks  his  lot  hard  enough  without  his 
having  stones  put  into  his  shoes.  I  can't 
help  thinking  that  if  you  were  to  put  a 
little  money  in  instead — and  you  have 
plentjr  of  that,  you  know,  more  than 
I  should  allow  you  if  I  were  your  fa- 
ther— the  old  fellow  would  be  far  more 
flabbergasted,  and  his  grimaces  would 
be  more  entertaining,  and  you  would 
be  more  satisfied  with  yourself." 

The  generous  youth  caught  fire  at  the 
idea,  and  put  a  double  dollar  into  each 
shoe.     Then  the  confederates  hid  behind 


220 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


a  hedge  and  watched  the  result  of  their 
trick.  They  had  not  long  to  wait.  An 
elderly  man  came  back  to  his  hard  work 
— work  a  little  beyond  his  years — and 
slipped  his  right  foot  into  his  right  shoe. 
Finding  something  hard  in  it,  he  took  it 
olf  again  and  discovered  a  double  dollar. 
His  grave  face  wore  a  look  of  amazeinenl . 
and  the  spies  behind  the  hedge  chuckled. 
He  laid  the  coin  in  the  palm  of  his  hand. 
and,  still  gazing  at  it  with  wonder,  he 
mechanically  slipped  his  foot  into  the 
other  sabot.  There  he  found  another 
coin.  He  look  it  up,  and  holding  ou1 
both  his  hands,  gazed  with  wonder  at 
them.  Then  he  suddenly  clasped  his 
hands  together,  and  fell  on  his  knees,  and 
cried  out  in  a  loud  voice,  "0  God,  this 
is  your  doing.  Nobody  nut  you  knows 
the  state  we  are  in  at  home,  my  wife  in 
her    I'ed.    my    Children     starving,    and     1 

hardly  able  to  earn  a  crust  with  these 
old  hands.  It  is  You  who  have  sent  me 
these  blessed  coins  by  one  of  Your 
angels." 

Then  h.'  paused,  and  another  idea 
st  ruck    him  : 

"Perhaps  it  is  not  an  angel  from 
heaven.  There  are  human  angels,  even  in 
this  world;  kind  hearts  tha.1  love  to  feed 
the  hungry,  and  succor  the  poor.  <  me  of 
these  has  passed  by.  like  sunshine  in  win- 
ter, and  has  seen  the  poor  old  mall's 
slices,  ami  has  dropped  all  this  money 
into  them,  and  gone  on  again,  and  not 
even  waited  to  he  thanked.  But  a  poor 
man's  blessing  Qies  fast,  and  shall  over- 
take him  and  he  with  him  to  the  end  of 
the  world,  and  to  the  end  of  his  own 
time.  May  God  and  His  angels  jro  with 
you,  keep  you  from  poverty  and  from 
sickness,  and  may  you  feel  in  your  own 
heart  a  little  of  the  warmth  and  the  joy 
you  have  brought  to  me  and  mine.  I'll 
do  no  more  work  to-day.  I'll  go  home 
to  my  wife  and  children,  and  they  shall 
kneel,  and  bless  the  hand  that  has  given 
us  t  his  comfort,  and  then  gone  away  and 
thought  nothing  of  it ." 

He  put  on  his  shoes,  shouldered  his  ax, 
and  went  home. 

Then  the  spies  had  a  little  dialogue. 

"  This  I  call  really  good  fun,"  said  the 


tutor,  in  rather  a  shaky  voice;  "and 
what  are  you  sniveling  at  ?  " 

"  'Tisn't  I  that  am  sniveling  so  ;  it  is 
you." 

'•  Well,  then,  we  are  both  sniveling," 
said  the  tutor,  and  with  that,  both  being 
foreigners,  they  embraced,  and  did  not 
conceal  their  emotion  any  longer. 

••  ( 'nine  on,"  said  the  boy. 

••  Where  next  ?  "  asked  the  tutor. 

■•  Why.  follow  him  to  be  sure.  I  want 
to  know  where  he  lives.  Do  you  think  I 
will  let  his  wife  be  sick,  and  his  children 
starve,  after  this  ? 

"  I  tear  i>o\ ."  said  t  he  I  utor,  "  I  don't 
for  a  moment  think  you  will.  Yours  is 
not  the  age,  nor  the  heart,  that  does 
things  by  halves." 

So  they  dogged  their  victim  home,  and 

the  young  nobleman  secured  a  modest 
competence  from  that  hour  to  a  very 
worthy  and  poverty  -  strick en  family. 
Now  I  think  that  both  these  veins  of 
humor  mighi  be  worked  to  the  profit  of 
mankind,  and  especially  of  those  who  can 
contrive  to  be  witty  or  humorous,  yet 
kindly,  and  of  those  who  will  profit  by 
this  improved  sort  of  humor.  1  have 
heard  of  an  eccentric  gentleman  who  had 
some  poor  female  relations,  and  asked 
them  to  tea,  a  beverage  he  himself  de- 
tested. He  retired  before  the  tea-drink- 
ing commenced,  and  watched  their  laces 
from  another  room.  They  found  the  cups 
mighty  heavy,  and  could  hardly  lift  the 
ponderous  liquid.  They  set  them  down, 
probed  the  contents,  and  found  a  sedi- 
ment of  forty  sovereigns  in  each  cup. 
Each  discovery  being  announced  by  little 
screeches,  and  followed  by  continuous 
cackling,  the  eccentric  host  appears  to 
have  got  more  fun  out  of  it  than  by  the 
vulgar  process  of  drawing  checks  for  the 
amount . 

The  human  mind,  when  once  the  atten- 
tion of  many  persons  is  given  to  a  subject, 
is  so  ingenious,  and  gets  so  much  metal 
out  of  a  small  vein  of  ore,  that  I  feel  as- 
sured, if  people  at  home  and  abroad  will 
bring  their  minds  to  bear  on  this  subject, 
they  may  in  some  degree  improve  man- 
ners, and  embellish  human  life  with  good- 
hearted  humor  and  kindly  jokes. 


READIANA. 


PREFACE. 

Many  people  think  they  can  discern  a 
novelist's  real  opinions  in  his  works,  and. 
of  course,  when  he  speaks  in  his  own  per- 
son, they  can.  But  surely  the  dialogue 
of  fictitious  characters  must  be  an  unsafe 
guide  to  an  author's  real  mind ;  for  it  is 
the  writer's  business  to  make  his  charac- 
ters deliver  their  convictions,  not  his, 
and  as  eloquently  as  possible.  My  good 
friend,  Mr.  Chatto,  has  thought  it  worth 
while  to  ransack  the  files  for  my  personal 
convictions  on  various  subjects  and  to 
publish  them.  In  this  he  has  consulted 
friendship  rather  than  interest.  How- 
ever, honest  and  lasting  convictions  are 
worth  something,  and  this  volume  con- 
tains nothing  else. 

I  find  I  have  gone  a  little  beyond  the 
mark  in  calling  the  execution  of  Murdoch 
illegal.  It  is  not  primd  facie  illegal  to 
hang  a  man  who  kills  an  officer  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duty,  but  in  this  country 
law  goes  by  precedent ;  Murdoch  gar- 
roted  the  jailer,  not  with  the  intention 
of  killing  him,  but  of  escaping  while  the 
jailer  was  disabled  for  a  time.  The  de- 
sire for  liberty  is  as  natural  and  overpow- 
ing  as  hunger,  and  the  prisoner  acted 
upon  it  with  no  murderous  intention 
whatever.  He  never  left  the  neighbor- 
hood, sure  proof  he  did  not  know  he  had 
killed  the  jailer,  and  he  went  into  tears 
when  he  heard  the  old  man  was  dead. 
The  people  who  at  that  date  misgoverned 
this  nation  had  tempted  Murdoch  to  the 


act  by  leaving  Hastings  Jail  inefficiently 
guarded.  When  they  hung  the  youth 
they  had  tempted — hung  him  to  hide  their 
own  fault — the  spectators  of  the  execu- 
tion were  fewer  than  ever  assembled  to 
see  a  hanging  before  or  since,  and  the 
onky  cry  that  came  from  this  handful  of 
spectators  was,  "Murder!  Murder!!" 
Just  three  months  after  this  butchery, 
an  escaped  prisoner  was  brought  before 
a  judge;  the  judge  was  invited  by  the 
crown  to  inflict  condign  punishment ;  he 
treated  the  proposal  with  contempt. 
••The  prisoner,"  said  he,  "yielded  to 
the  natural  and  imperious  desire  of  lib- 
erty. It  was  his  business  to  escape,  and 
it  was  the  jailer's  business  not  to  let 
him." 

In  two  other  matters  1  said  too  little. 
Colonel  Baker's  sentence  was  beyond  all 
precedent,  and  the  verdict  hardly  justi- 
fied. In  a  court  that  defies  the  Divine 
law,  and  the  laws  of  civilized  Europe,  by 
closing  the  mouth  of  the  accused,  every 
admission  made  by  the  prosecutor  ought 
to  have  double  weight.  When  a  young 
lady  orders  a  gallant  colonel  to  hold  her 
while  she  projects  from  a  railway  car- 
riage, he  is  her  ally  in  a  gymnastic,  not 
an  assailant  she  really  feai-s.  or  has  grave 
reason  to  fear.  Quodcunque  ostendis 
nulii  sic  incredulus  odi.  The  other  ex- 
ample in  which  I  have  written  below  the 
mark,  is  the  verdict  of  willful  murder 
against  Louis  Staunton,  Mrs.  Patrick 
Staunton,  and  Alice  Rhodes :  a  verdict 
bloodthirsty  yet  ridiculous,  a  verdict  ob- 

(221) 


222 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READ&. 


tained  by  transparent  perjury  in  the 
witness-box,  and  prejudice,  sophistry,  and 
bad  law  upon  the  bench. 

But  this  latter  shortcoming-  I  hope  to 
repair,  with  God's  help,  before  the  two 
victims  of  perjury,  sophistry,  false  fact, 
and  rotten  law,  are  slaughtered  in  the 
bloodless  but  effectual  shambles,  where 
the  one  real  criminal  has  already  perished. 
Charles  Reade. 

October,  1882. 


A   BRAVE   WOMAN. 

THE  pi  s  to  bear  what    people 

of  rank  and  reputation  do  and  say,  how- 
ever trivial.  We  defer  to  this  taste  :  and 
Miii  gives  us  a  righl  to  gratify  our  own 
now  and  then,  by  presenting  what  maj 
tie  called  the  reverse  picture,  the  remark- 
able acts,  or  sufferings,  or  qualities,  of 
persons  unknown  to  society,  because  so- 
ciety is  a  clique  ;  and  to  tame.  I 
is  pari  ial. 

In  this  spirit  we  shall  tell  our  readers  a 
few  facts  about  a  person  we  are  not  likely 
to  misjudge,  for  we  do  not  know  h 
by  sigh! . 

31st  of  Au-ust.  1878,  a  train  left  Mar- 
gate for  London  by  the  Chatham  and 
Dover  line.  At  Sittingbourne  the  points- 
man turned  the  points  the  wrong  way, 
and  the  train  dashed  into  a  shunted  train 
at  full  speed.  The  engine,  tender,  and 
leading  carriages  were  crushed  fco 
and  piled  over  one  another.  The  nearesl 
passengers  were  chatting  merrily  one 
moment,  and  dead,  dying,  or  mutilated, 
the  next . 

Nearest  the  engine  was  a  third-class 
carriage,  ami  in  its  furthest  compartment 
sat  a  Mrs.  Freeland,  who  in  heryouth  had 
led  an  adventurous  life  in  the  colonies,  but 
now  in  middle  age  had  returned  to  mother 
England  for  peace  and  quiet.  She  felt  a 
crash  and  heard  a  hissing,  and  for  one 
moment  saw  the  tender  bursting  through 


the  compartments  toward  her ;  then  she 
was  hurled  clown  upon  her  face,  with  some 
awful  weight  upon  her,  and  wedged  im- 
movable in  a  debris  of  fractured  iron, 
splintered  wood,  shattered  glass,  and 
mutilated  bodies. 

In  a  few  minutes  people  ran  to  help,  but 
m  that  excited  state  which  sometimes  ag-l 
gravates    these    dire    calamities.      First 
bhey  were  for  dragging  lier  ou1  by  force; 
bu1     she  -possessed,    and    said: 

"Pray,  be  calm  and  don't  attempt  it:  I 
am  fast  by  the  legs,  and  a  great  weighl 
on  my  back." 

Then  t  hej  'ere  for  breaking  into  the 
carriage  from  above:  bu1  she  called  to 
them.  ■■  Please  donM  do  that— the  roof  is 
broken,  and  you  don't  know  what  you 
may  bring  down  upon  us." 

Thus  advised  by  the  person  most  likely 
to  lose  her  head,  one  would  think,  they 

;ii  cut  ranee   at    the    sides.       They 

removed  from  tier  back  an  iron  w) I  aim 

body,  and  they  sawed  round  her 
jammed  and  lacerated  limbs,  and  at  last 
v.  ith  difficulty  carried  out  a  lady,  with  her 
boots  torn  and  tilled  with  blood,  her 
clot  hes  m  ribbons,  her  face  pouring  blood, 
her  back  apparently  Indian,  and  her 
right  leg  furrowed  all  down  to  the  very 
foot  witli  a  -aping  wound,  that  laid  bare 
■■.'.  s  :  besides  numberless  contusions 
and  smaller  injuries.  They  laid  her  on  a 
mat  upon  the  platform,  and  there  she  re- 
mained, refusing  many  oilers  of  brandy, 
and  waiting  for  a  surgeon. 

None  came  tor  a  longtime  :  and  benevo- 
iture,  so-called,  sent  a  heavy  rain. 
At  last,  in  three-quarters  of  an  hour, 
-  arrived,  and  one  of  them  re- 
moved tier  on  her  mat  into  a  shed,  thai 
let  in  only  part  of  the  rain.  He  found  her 
spine  injured,  took  a  double  handful  of 
-.  wood,  and  glass,  out  of  hei 
head  and  face,  and  then  examined  her 
leg.  He  looked  aghast  at  the  awful  fur- 
row. The  sufferer  said  quietly.  "  1  should 
like  a  stitch  or  two  put  into  that."  The 
surgeon  looked  at  her  in  amazement . 
••  Can  you  bear  it?  "  She  said  :  "I  think 
so.7' 

He  said  she  had  better  fortify  herself 
with  a  little  brandy.    She  objected  to  that 


EEADIAXA. 


223 


as  useless.  But  he  insisted,  and  the  aw- 
ful furrow  was  stitched  up  with  silk. 
This  done  he  told  her  she  had  better  be 
moved  to  the  infirmary  at  Chatham. 

"Army  surgeons?"  said  she.  "No, 
thank  you.  I  shall  go  to  a  London  hos- 
pital."' 

Being  immovable  in  this  resolution,  she 
had  to  wait  three  hours  for  a  train. 

At  last  she  was  sent  up  to  London, 
lying  upon  a  mat  on  the  floor  of  a  car- 
riage, hashed,  as  we  have 'described,  and 
soaked  with  rain.  From  the  London 
station  she  was  conveyed  on  a  stretcher 
to  St.  George's  Hospital.  There  they 
discovered  many  grave  injuries,  admired 
her  for  her  courage  and  wisdom  in  having 
had  her  wounded  leg  sewn  up  at  once,  but 
told  her  with  regret  that  to  be  effectual 
it  must  be  secured  with  silver  points,  and 
that  without  delay. 

"  Very  well."  said  she  patiently  ;  "  but 
give  me  chloroform,  for  I  am  worn  out." 

The  surgeon  said:  "If  you  could  en- 
dure it  without  chloroform  it  would  be 
better."  He  saw  she  had  the  courage 
of  ten  men. 

"Well,"  said  she,  "let  me  have  some- 
body's hand  to  hold,  and  I  will  try  to 
bear  it." 

A  sympathizing  young  surgeon  gave 
this  brave  woman  his  hand  :  and  she 
bore  to  have  the  silk  threads  removed, 
and  thirty  little  silver  skewers  passed 
and  repassed  through  her  quivering 
flesh,  sixty  wounds  to  patch  up  one. 
It  afterward  transpired  that  the  good 
surgeon  was  only  reserving  chloroform 
for  the  amputation  he  thought  must 
follow,  having  little  hope  of  saving  such 
a  leg. 

Whatever  charity  and  science — united 
in  our  hospitals,  though  disunited  in 
those  dark  hells  where  God's  innocent 
creatures  are  cut  up  alive  out  of  curi- 
osity— could  do,  was  done  for  her  at  St. 
George's  Hospital  ;  the  wounded  leg  was 
saved,  and  in  three  weeks  the  patient 
was  carried  home.  But  the  deeper  inju- 
ries seemed  to  get  worse.  She  lay  six 
months  on  her  back,  and  after  that  was 
lame  and  broken  and  aching  from  head 
to  foot   for  nearly  a  year.     As  soon  as 


she  could  crawl  about  she  busied  her- 
self in  relieving  the  sick  and  the  poor, 
according  to  her  means. 

Fifteen  months  after  the  railway  acci- 
dent, a  new  and  mysterious  injury  be- 
gan to  show  itself;  severe  internal 
pains  accompanied  with  wasting,  which 
was  quite  a  new  feature  in  the  case. 
This  brought  her  to  death's  door  after 
all. 

But,  when  faint  hopes  were  enter- 
tained of  her  recovery,  the  malady  de- 
clared itself,  an  abscess  in  the  intestines. 
It  broke,  and  left  the  sufferer  prostrate, 
but  out  of  danger. 

Unfortunately,  in  about  a  month  an- 
other formed,  and  laid  her  low  again, 
until  it  gave  way  like  its  predecessor. 
And  that  has  now  been  her  life  for 
months;  constantly  growing  these  ago- 
nizing things,  of  which  a  single  one  is 
generally  fatal. 

In  one  of  her  short  intervals  of  peace 
a  friend  of  hers,  Major  Merrier,  repre- 
sented to  her  the  merits  and  the  diffi- 
culties of  a  certain  hospital  for  diseases 
of  the  skin.  Instantly  this  brave  woman 
sets  to  work  and  lives  for  other  afflicted 
persons.  She  fights  the  good  fight,  talks, 
writes,  persuades,  insists,  obtains  the 
public  support  of  Ave  duchesses,  five 
marchionesses,  thirty-two  countesses, 
and  a  hundred  ladies  of  rank,  and  also 
of  many  celebrated  characters:  obtains 
subscriptions,  organizes  a  grand  bazaar, 
etc.,  for  this  worthy  object. 

Now.  as  a  general  rule,  permanent  in- 
valids fall  into  egotism  :  but  here  is  a 
lady,  not  only  an  invalid,  but  a  sufferer, 
and  indeed  knocked  down  by  suffering 
half  her  time ;  yet  with  undaunted 
heart,  and  charitable,  unselfish  soul, 
she  struggles  and  works  for  others. 
whose  maladies  are  after  all  much 
lighter  than   her  own. 

Ought  so  much  misfortune  and  merit 
to  receive  no  public  notice  ?  Ought  so 
rare  an  union  of  male  fortitude  and 
womanly  pity  to  suffer  and  relieve  with- 
out a  word  of  praise  ?  Why  to  us,  who 
judge  by  things,  not  names,  this  seems 
some  heroic  figure  strayed  out  of  An- 
tiquity  into   an   age   of    little    men  and 


■zu 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES   READE. 


women,    who    howl   at   the   scratch   of  a 
pen . 

Such  a  character  deserves  to  be  sung 
by  some  Christian  poet;  but  as  poet- 
asters are  many  and  poets  are  few,  Mrs. 
Rosa  Freeland.  brave,  suffering1  and 
charitable,  is  chronicled  in  the  prose  of 
"Fact." 


PERSEVERANCE. 


On  a  certain  day  in  the  year  1819,  Mr. 
<  'limy,  an  attorney  in  Shaftesbury,  was 
leaving  his  office  for  the  day.  when  he 
was  met  at  the  door  by  a  respectable 
woman  and  a  chubby-faced  boy  with  a 
bright  eye.  He  knew  the  woman  slightly 
— a  widow  thai  kept  a  small  stationer's 
slid])  in  the  town. 

She  opened  her  business  at  once. 

••<  Mi.  .Mr.  dully.  1    have    brought   you 

my  Robert  ;  he  gives  no  peace;  Ins 

heart  is  so  set  on  being  in  a  lawyer's 
utiie,..      Mm    there,  1   have   not  go1    i  be 

money  to  apprentice  him.  Only  we 
thoughl  perhaps  you  could  find  some 
place  or  oilier  for  him.  if  it  was  ever  so 
small.'*  Then  she  broke  off  and  looked 
appealingly,   ami  the   boy's  cheeks  and 

eyes  were  tired  with  expectation. 

Most  country  towns  at  thai  tune  pos- 
sessed two  solicitors,  who  might  be  called 
tj'pes ;  the  old-established  man.  whose 
firm  for  generations  had  done  the  pacific 
and  lucrative  business — wills,  settlements, 
partnerships,  mortgages,  etc. — and  the 
sharp  practitioner,  who  was  the  abler  of 
the  two  at  litigation,  and  had  to  shake 
the  plum  tree  instead  of  sitting  under  it 
and  opening  his  mouth  for  the  windfalls. 
Mr.  Chitty  was  No.  2. 

But  these  sharp  practitioners  are  often 
very  good-natured  ;  and  so,  looking  at 
the  pleading  widow  and  the  beaming  boy, 
he  felt  disposed  to  oblig'e  them,  and  rather 
sorry  he  could   not.     He  said  his  was  a 


small  office,  and  he  had  no  clerk's  place 
vacant :  "  and,  indeed,  if  I  had.  he  is  too 
young  :   why  he  is  a  mere  child  !  " 

■■  I  am  twelve  next  so-and-so,"  said  the 
boy.  giving  the  month  and  the  day. 

••You  don't  look  it,  then,"  said  Mr. 
Chitty  incredulously. 

••Indeed,  but  he  is.  sir."  said  the 
widow;  "he  never  looked  his  age.  and 
wi'ites  a  beautiful  hand." 

'•  But  I  tell  you  I  have  no  vacancy," 
said  Mr.  Chitty,  turning  dogged. 

'•  Well,  thank  you.  sir.  all  the  same," 
said  the  widow,  with  the  patience  of  her 
sex.  '•  Come,  Robert,  we  mustn't  detain 
the  gentleman." 

So  they  turned  away  with  disappoint- 
ment marked  on  their  faces,  the  hoy's 
especially. 

Then  .Mr.  Chitty  said  in  a  hesitating 
way:  "To  lie  sure,  there  is  a  vacancy, 
but  it   is  not  the  sort  of  thing  for  you." 

•'  What  is  it.  sir.  if  you  please!'"  asked 
the  widow. 

••  Well,  we  want  an  office  boy." 

••  An  office  boy  !  What  do  \  on  say, 
Robi  it  ?  1  suppose  n  is  ;i  beginning,  sir. 
What  will  lie  have  to  do?  " 

'•  Why.  sweep  the  office,  run  errands, 
carry  papers — and  that  is  nol  what  he  is 
after.  Look  at  him — he  has  got  thai  eye 
of  ins  fixed  on  a  counselor's  wig.  you 
ina.\  depend:  and  sweeping  a  country 
attorney's  office  is  not  tie.1  stepping-stone 

to  that."  He  added  warily.  "  a1  least. 
t  here  is  no  precedenl  reported." 

•  La  '  sir."  said  the  widow,  -'he  only 
wants  to  turn  an  honest  penny,  and  be 
among  law-papers." 

"Ay,  ay.  lo  write  'cm  and  sell  'em, 
but  not  to  dust  em  !  " 

"For  thai  matter,  sir.  I  believe  he'd 
rather  be  the  dust  itself  in  your  office 
than  bide  at  home  with  me."  Here  she 
turned  angry  with  her  offspring  for  half 
a  moment. 

••  And  so  I  would."  said  young  master 
stoutly,  indorsing  his  mother's  hyperbole 
very  boldly,  though  his  own  mind  was 
not  of  that  kind  which  originates  meta- 
phors, similes,  and  engines  of  inaccuracy  J 
in  general. 

"  Then  I   say  no  more,"  observed  Mk. 


READIANA. 


225 


Chitty  ;  "  only  mind,  it  is  half-a-crown  a 
week — that  is  all." 

The  terms  were  accepted,  and  Master 
Robert  entered  on  his  humble  duties.  He 
was  steady,  persevering-,  and  pushing-; 
in  less  than  two  years  he  got  promoted 
to  be  a  copying  clerk.  From  this  in  due 
course  he  became  a  superior  clerk.  He 
studied,  pushed  and  persevered,  till  at 
last  he  became  a  fair  practical  lawyer, 
and  Mr.  Chitty's  head  clerk.  And  so 
much  for  Perseverance. 

He  remained  some  years  in  this  posi- 
tion, trusted  by  his  employer  and  re- 
spected too  ;  for  besides  his  special  gifts 
as  a  law  clerk,  he  was  strict  in  morals, 
and  religious  without  parade. 

In  those  days  country  attorneys  could 
not  fly  to  the  metropolis  and  back  to 
dinner.  They  relied  much  on  London 
attorneys,  their  agents.  Lawyer  Chitty's 
agent  was  Mr.  Bishop,  a  judge's  clerk  ; 
but  in  those  days  a  judge's  clerk  had  an 
insufficient  stipend,  and  was  allowed  to 
eke  it  out  by  private  practice.  Mr. 
Bishop  was  agent  to  several  country  at- 
torneys. Well,  Chitty  had  a  heavy  cast' 
co.ning  on  at  the  assizes,  and  asked 
Bishop  to  come  down  for  once  in  a  way 
and  help  him  in  person.  Bishop  did  so, 
and  in  working  the  case  was  delighted 
with  Chitty's  managing  clerk.  Before 
leaving-,  he  said  he  sadly  wanted  a  man- 
aging clerk  he  could  rely  on.  Would  Mr. 
Chitty  oblige  him  and  part  with  this 
young- man  ? 

Chitty  made  rather  a  wrjr  face,  and 
said  that  young  man  was  a  pearl  -'I 
don't  know  what  I  shall  do  without  him  ; 
why,  he  is  my  alter  ego.'' 

Howevei',  he  ended  by  saying  gener- 
ously that  he  would  not  stand  in  the 
young  man's  way.  Then  they  had  the 
clerk  in  and  put  the  question  to  him. 

"Sir,"  said  he,  "it  is  the  ambition  of 
my  heart  to  go  to  London.*' 

Twenty-four  hours  after  that,  our 
humble  hero  was  installed  in  Mr.  Bishop's 
office,  directing  a  large  business  in  town 
and  countrj\  He  filled  that  situation  for 
many  years,  and  got  to  be  well  known  in 
the  legal  profession.  A  brother  of  mine, 
who  for  years  was  one  of  a  firm  of  solic- 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


itors  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  remembers 
him  well  at  this  period  ;  and  to  have  met 
him  sometimes  in  his  own  chambers  and 
sometimes  in  Judge's  Chambers ;  my 
brother  says  he  could  not  help  noticing 
him,  for  he  bristled  with  intelligence,  and 
knew  a  deal  of  law,  though  he  looked  a 
boy. 

The  best  of  the  joke  is  that  this  clerk 
afterward  turned  out  to  be  four  years 
older  than  that  solicitor  who  took  him  for 
a  boy. 

He  was  now  among  books  as  well  as 
lawyers,  and  studied  closely  the  prin- 
ciples of  law,  while  the  practice  was 
sharpening  him.  He  was  much  in  the 
courts,  and  every  case  there  cited  in  argu- 
ment or  judgment  he  hunted  out  in  the 
books,  and  digested  it,  together  with  its 
application  in  practice  by  the  living  judge, 
who  had  quoted,  received,  or  evaded  it. 
He  was  a  Baptist,  and  lodged  with  a 
Baptist  minister  and  his  two  daughters. 
He  fell  in  love  with  one  of  them,  proposed 
to  her,  and  was  accepted.  The  couple 
were  married  without  pomp,  and  after 
the  ceremony  the  good  minister  took  t  hem 
aside,  and  said,  "  I  have  only  £200  in  the 
world  ;  I  have  saved  it  a  little  at  a  time, 
for  my  two  daughters.  Here  is  your  share. 
my  children.  Then  he  gave  his  daughter 
£100,  and  she  handed  it  to  the  bridegroom 
on  the  spot.  The  good  minister  smiled 
approval  and  they  sat  down  to  what  fine 
folk  call  breakfast,  but  they  called  dinner, 
and  it  was. 

After  dinner  and  the  usual  cei-emonies, 
the  bridegroom  rose  and  surprised  them 
a  little.  He  said.  "I  am  very  sorry  to 
leave  you.  but  I  have  a  particular  busi- 
ness to  attend  to;  it  will  take  me  just 
one  hour." 

Of  course  there  was  a  look  or  two  in- 
terchanged, especially  by  every  female 
there  present ;  but  the  confidence  in  him 
was  too  great  to  be  disturbed  ;  and  this 
was  his  first  eccentricity. 

He  left  them,  went  to  Gray's  Inn,  put 
down  his  name  as  a  student  for  the  Bar  ; 
paid  away  his  wife's  dowry  in  the  fees, 
and  returned  within  the  hour. 

Next  day  the  married  clerk  was  at  the 
office  as  usual,  and  entered  on  a  twofold 

D8 


226 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


life.  He  worked  as  a  clerk  till  five,  dined 
in  the  hall  of  Gray's  Inn  as  a  sucking 
barrister ;  and  studied  hard  at  night. 
This  was  followed  by  a  still  stronger  ex- 
ample of  duplicate  existence,  ami  one 
without  a  parallel  in  my  reading  and  ex- 
perience— he  became  a  writer,  and  pro- 
duced a  masterpiece,  which,  as  regarded 
the  practice  of  our  courts,  became  at 
once  the  manual  of  attorneys,  counsel, 
and  judges. 

The  author,  though  his  book  was  en- 
titled "  practice,"  showed  some  qualities 
of  a  jurist,  and  corrected  soberly  but 
firmly  unscientific  legislature  and  judi- 
cial blunders. 

So  here  w;is  a  student  of  Gray's  Inn. 
supposed  to  be  picking  up  in  thai  inn  a 
small  smattering  of  law.  yet,  to  diversify 
his  crude  studies,  instructing  mature 
counsel  and  correcting  The  judges  them- 
selves, a1  whose  chambers  he  attended 
daily,  cap  in  hand,  as  an  at  bornej  - 
There's  an  intellectual  hotch-potch  for 
you  !  All  t  his  tlid  not  in  his  inn  i 
him  to  be  a  barrister ;  bu1  years  and  din- 
ners   did.      After    some    weary    years    he 

took  the  oaths  a1  Westminster,  and  va- 
cated by  that  act  his  place  in  Bishop's 
office,  and  was  a  pauper— for  an  after- 
noon. 

Hut  work,  thai  has  been  long  and  tedi- 
ously prepared,  can  be  executed  quickly: 
and  adverse  circumstances,  when  Perse- 
verance conquers  them,  turn  round  and 
1 une  allies. 

The  ex-clerk  ami  young  barrister  had 
plowed  and  sowed  with  such  pains  and 
labor,  thai  lie  reaped  with  comparative 
ease.  Half  the  managing  clerks  in  I  or 
don  knew  him  and  believed  in  him.  They 
had  the  ear  of  their  employers,  and 
brought  him  pleadings  to  draw  and  mo- 
tions to  make.  His  book,  too.  brougb.1 
him  clients:  and  he  was  soon  in  full 
career  as  a  junior  counsel  and  special 
pleader.  Senior  counsel  too  found  that 
they  could  rely  upon  his  zeal,  accuracy, 
and  learning.  They  began  to  request 
that  he  might  be  retained  with  them  in 
difficult  cases,  and  he  became  first  junior 
counsel  at  the  Bar ;  and  so  much  for  Per- 
severance. 


Time  rolled  its  ceaseless  course,  and  a 
silk  gown  was  at  his  disposal.  Now,  a 
popular  junior  counsel  cannot  always  af- 
ford to  take  silk,  as  they  call  it.  Indeed. 
if  In'  is  learned,  but  not  eloquent,  he  may 
ruin  himself  by  the  change.  But  the  re- 
markable man.  whose  career  1  am  epito- 
mizing, did  not  hesitate:  he  still  pushed 
onward,  and  so  one  morning  the  Lord* 
Chancellor  sat  for  an  hour  in  the  Queen's 

Bench,  and  Mr.  Robert  Lush  was  ap- 
pointed   o if    Her    Majesty's    I 

learned  in  the  law.  and  then  and  there, 
by  the  Chancellor's  invitation,  stepped 
oui  from  among  the  juniors  and  took  his 
Seal  within  the  Bar.  So  much  for  Perse- 
\  erance. 

From  1  his  point  1  he  outline  of  his  career 
is  known  to  everybody,  lie  was  appointed 
in  186a  one  of  the  judges  of  the  Queen's 
Bench,  and.  after  sitting  iii  thai   court 

some    years,    was    promoted    to   be   a    lord 

just  ice  of  appeal. 

A  few  days  ago  he  died,  lamented  anil 
revered    by  1  he    legal    profession,  which    is 

very  critical,  and  does  not  bestow  its  re- 
peet  lightly. 

1  knew  him  only  as  queen's  counsel.  1 
had  him  againsl   me  once,  but  oftener  for 

me.  because  my  brother  thought  him 
even  then  the  best  lawyer  and  the  most 
zealous  at  the  Bar,  and  always  retained 
him  if  he  could.  During  the  period  1 
knew  him  personally  Mr.  Lush  had  still 
a  plump,  unwrinkled  face,  and  a  singu- 
larly bright  eye.  His  voice  was  full,  mel- 
low, and  penetrating:  it  filled  the  court 
without  apparent  effort,  and  accorded 
well  with  his  style  of  eloquence,  which 
was    what     Cicero    calls    the    / c m prruf inn 

genus  loquendi. 

Reasoning  carried  to  perfection  is  one 
of  the  fine  arts:  an  argument  by 
enchained  the  ear  and  charmed  the 
derstanding.  He  began  at  the  begin 
lung,  and  each  succeeding  topic  was  ar- 
ticulated and  disposed  of,  and  succeeded 
by  its  right  successor,  in  language  so  lb 
and  order  so  lucid,  that  he  rooted  and 
grew  conviction  in  the  mind.  Tantum 
series  nexuraque  pollent. 

I  never  heard  him  at  Nisi  Prius,  but 
should  think  he  could  do  nothing  ill,  yet 


t  is  one 
>y  Lush  I 
the  un-  jl 


BE  A  DIANA. 


227 


would  be  greater  at  convincing-  judges 
than  at  persuading  juries  right  or  wrong  ; 
for  at  this  pastime  he  would  have  to 
escape  from  the  force  of  his  own  under- 
standing ;  whereas  I  have  known  counsel 
blatant  and  admired,  whom  Nature  and 
flippant  fluency  had  secured  against  that 
difficulty. 

He  was  affable  to  clients,  and  I  had 
more  than  one  conversation  with  him, 
very  interesting  to  me.  But  to  intrude 
these  would  be  egotistical,  and  disturb 
the  just  proportions  of  this  short  notice. 
I  hope  some  lawyer,  who  knew  him  well 
as  counsel  and  judge,  will  give  us  his  dis- 
tinctive features,  if  it  is  only  to  correct 
those  vague  and  colorless  notices  of  him 
tit  at  have  appeared. 

This  is  due  to  the  legal  profession.  But, 
after  all,  his  early  career  interests  a  much 
widei-  circle.  We  cannot  all  be  judges: 
but  we  can  all  do  great  things  by  tin'  per- 
severance, which,  from  an  office  bo\T, 
(made  this  man  a  clerk,  a  counsel,  and  a 
ljudge.  Do  but  measure  the  difficulties  he 
overcame  in  his  business  with  the  difficul- 
ties of  rising-  in  any  art.  profession,  or 
honorable  walk  ;  and  down  with  despond- 
ency's whine,  and  the  groans  of  self- 
:  deceiving  laziness.  You  who  have  youth 
and  health,  never  you  quail 

"  At  those  twin  jailers  of  the  daring  heart, 
Low  birth  and  iron  fortune." 

See  what  becomes  of  those  two  bug- 
bears when  the  stout  champion  Single- 
heart  and  the  giant  Perseverance  take 
them  by  the  throat. 

Why.  the  very  year  those  chilling  lines 
were  first  given  to  the  public  by  Bulwer 
and  Macready,  Robert  Lush  paid  his 
wife's  dowry  away  to  Gray"s  Inn  in  fees, 
and  never  whined  nor  doubted  nor  looked 
right  nor  left,  but  went  straight  on — and 
prevailed. 

Genius  and  talent  may  have  their 
bounds — but  to  the  power  of  single- 
hearted  perseverance  there  is  no  known 
limit. 

Non  omnis  morluus  est j  the  departed 
judge  still  teaches  from  his  tomb :  his 
dicta  will  outlive  him  in  our  English 
courts  :  his  gesta  are  for  mankind. 


Such  an  instance  of  single-heartedness, 
perseverance  and  proportionate  success 
in  spite  of  odds  is  not  for  one  narrow 
island,  but  the  globe  ;  an  old  man  sends 
it  -to  the  young  in  both  hemispheres  with 
this  comment :  If  difficulties  lie  in  the 
way,  never  shirk  them,  but  think  of 
Robert  Lush,  and  trample  on  them.  If 
impossibilities  encounter  you— up  hearts 
and  at  "em. 

One  thing  more  to  those  who  would 
copy  Robert  Lush  in  all  essentials. 
Though  impregnated  from  infancy  with 
an  honorable  ambition,  he  remembered 
his  Creator  in  the  days  of  his  youth  ;  nor 
did  he  forget  Him.  when  the  world  poured 
its  honors  on  him,  and  those  insidious 
temptations  of  prosperity,  which  have 
hurt  the  soul  far  oftener  than  "  low  birth 
and  iron  fortune."  He  flourished  in  a 
skeptical  age  :  yet  he  lived,  and  died, 
fearing  God. 


A    HERO   AND   A    MARTYR. 

There  is  an  old  man  in  Glasgow,  who 
has  saved  more  than  forty  lives  in  the 
Clyde,  many  of  them  with  great  peril  to 
his  own.  Death  has  lately  removed  a 
French  hero,  who  was  his  rival,  and 
James  Lambert  now  stands  alone  in  Eu- 
rope. The  Frenchman  saved  more  lives 
than  Lambert,  but  then  he  did  most  of 
his  good  work  with  a  boat  and  saving 
gear.  The  Scot  had  nothing  but  his  own 
active  body,  his  ra.re  power  of  suspending 
his  breath,  and  his  lion  heart.  Two  of 
his  feats  far  surpass  anything  recorded 
of  his  French  competitor  :  he  was  upset 
in  a  boat  with  many  companions,  seized 
and  dragged  to  the  bottom,  yet  contrived 
to  save  nearly  them  all:  and  on  another 
occasion,  when  the  ice  had  broken  under 
a  man,  and  the  tide  had  sucked  him  un- 
der to  a  distance  of  several  yards,  James 
Lambert  dived  under  the  ice,  and  groped 


22o 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


for  the  man  till  he  was  nearly  breathless, 
and  dragged  him  back  to  the  hole,  and 
all  but  died  in  saving-  him.  Here  the 
chances  were  nine  to  one  against  his  ever 
finding-  that  small  aperture  again  and 
coming  out  alive.  Superior  in  daring  to 
his  one  European  rival,  he  has  yet.  another 
title  to  the  sympathy  of  mankind  ;  he  is 
blind  :  and  not  by  any  irrelevant  accident, 
but  m  consequence  of  bis  heroism  and  Ins 
goodness.  He  was  working  at  a  furnace 
one  wintry  day,  and  perspiring  freely. 
The  cry  got  up  that  a  man  was  drowning. 
He  flung  himself,  all  heated  as  he  was, 
into  icy  water,  ami.  when  he  cam it,  in- 
lost  his  sighl  i>>r  a  t  ime  on  the  very  bank. 
His  sight  returned:  inn  ever  after  thai 
daj  In-  was  subject  to  similar  seizures. 
They  became  more  frequent,  and  the  in- 
tervals of  sight  more  v.>\-<-.  until  the  dark- 
ness settled  down  and  tin-  light  retired 
forever. 

The  meaning  of  the  word  "martyr"  is 
— a  man  who  is  punished  for  a  great  virt  ue 
bj  .1  gre  .1  calamity.  Every  martyr  in 
Foxe's  hook,  or  Butler's,  or  the  "Acta 
Sanctorum,"  or  t  he  "  Vita  ml  >cci- 

dentis," comes  under  that  definition;  bu1 

not  more  SO  than  .lames  Lambert  ;  and 
the  hero  who  risks  his  life  in  saving,  is  just 
'  as  much  a  hero  as  he  who  risks  his  life  in 
killing,  his  fellow-creatures.  Therefore  1 
do  not  force  nor  pervert  words,  but  weigh 
them  well,  when  1  call  James  Lambert 
w  hat  he  is  a  hero  and  a  martyr.  That 
is  a  great  deal  to  say  of  any  one  man  : 
for  all  of  us  who  are  really  men  or  w  omen, 
and  not,  as  Lamberl  once  said  to  me, 
"mere  broom-besoms  in  the  name  o' 
men."  admire  a  hero,  and  pity  a  martyr, 
alive  or  dead. 

In  espousing  this  hero's  cause  I  do  but 
follow  a  worthy  example.  Mr.  Hugh 
Macdonald  was  a  Glasgow-  citizen,  and  a 
man  known  by  many  acts  of  charity  ami 
public  feeling.  He  revealed  to  the  Glas- 
gow public  the  very  existence  of  Burns's 
daughter,  and  awakened  a  warm  interest 
in  her;  and  in  1856  he  gave  the  city  an 
account  of  James  Lambert's  deeds  and 
affliction,  and  asked  a  subscription.  Glas- 
gow responded  warmly  :  two  hundred  and 
sixty  pounds  was  raised,  and  afterward 


seventy  pounds.  The  sum  total  was 
banked,  and  doled  to  James  Lambert  ten 
shillings  per  week.  However,  the  sub- 
scribers made  one  great  mistake,  they 
took  for  granted  Lambert  would  not 
outlive  their  money  :   but  he  has. 

In  1868,  having  read  Mr.  Macdonald's 
account,  I  visited  Lambert  and  heard 
Ins  story.  Being  now  blind,  and  compelled 
to  live  m  the  past,  he  had  a  vivid  recol- 
lection of  his  greatest  deeds  and  told  me 
them  with  spirit.  I.  who  am  a  painstak- 
ing man.  and  owe  my  success  to  it.  wrote 
down  the  particulars, and  the  very  word- 
that.  In- said,  had  passed  on  these  grand 
occasions.  Next  day,  1  tools  the  blind 
hero  down  to  the  ( '\\  de,  w  hose  even  bend 
he  knew  at  that  time,  and  made  him 
repeat  to  me  every  principal  incident  on 
its  own  spot.  Prom  that  i\:,y  1  used  to 
send  Jaine-  Lambert  monej  and  clothes 
at  odd  times:  but  1  did  not  write  about 
him  for  years.  However,  in  1  s r 4 .  1  pub- 
lished my  narrative  (entitled  "  A  Hero  and 
a  Martyr")  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
London,  the  Tribune,  New  York,  and  a 
shilling  pamphlet  with  a  One  engraving  of 
James  Lambert.  1  invited  a  subscription, 
and.  avoiding  the  error  of  the  former 
subscribers,  announced  from  t  he  first  t  hat 

it    should    .ii ected    to  buying  .lames 

Lambert  a  small  annuity  for  life.  The 
printed  story  flew  round  the  world.  Let- 
ters and  small  subscriptions  poured  in 
from  e\er\  pari  of  England,  and  in 
one  course  from  Calcutta,  from  the 
Australian  capitals,  from  New  York, 
Boston,  San  Francisco,  and  even  from 
Valparaiso  in  Chili.  An  American  boy 
sent  me  a  dollar  from  New  Orleans. 
Two  American  children  sent  me  a  dol- 
lar from  Chicago.  A  warm-hearted 
Glasgow  man  wrote  to  tin'  with  rapt- 
ure from  the  State  of  Massachusetts, 
to  say  every  word  was  true:  he  remem- 
bered blythe  Jamie  well,  and  his  unri- 
valed reputation ;  remembered  his  saving 
the  mill-girls,  and  added  an  incident  to 
my  narrative,  that  in  all  the  horror  of  the 
scene  James  Lambert's  voice  had  been 
heard  from  the  bank  shouting  lustily, 
'•  Dinua  grip  my  arms,  lassies  :  liing  on  to 
my  skirts."     The  English  papers  quoted 


RE  AD  I  AX  A. 


229 


largely  from  the  narrative  and  recom- 
mended the  subscriptions.  But,  while  the 
big-  world  rang-  with  praises  of  the  Glas- 
gow hei*o,  and  thrilled  with  pity  for  the 
Glasgow  martyr,  detractors  and  foes 
started  up  in  a  single  city.  And  what 
was  the  name  of  that  city  ?  Was  it 
Rome  jealous  for  Regulus  and  Quintus 
Curtius  ?  Was  it  Tarsus  jealous  for  St. 
Paul  ?  Was  it  Edinburgh,  Liverpool, 
Paris  or  Washington  ?  Oh,  dear  no  ; 
marvelous  to  relate,  it  was  Glasgow,  the 
citjr  of  Hugh  Mactlouald,  the  hero's  own 
birthplace — and  the  town  which  the  world 
honors  for  having  produced  him.  These 
detractors  deny  James  Lambert's  ex- 
ploits, or  say  they  were  few  and  small, 
not  many  and  great.  They  treat  his 
blindness  and  its  cause  as  a  mere  irrele- 
vant trifle,  and  pretend  he  squandered  the 
last  subscription — which  is  a  lie,  for  he 
never  had  the  control  of  it,  and  it  lasted 
ten  years.  Scribblers  who  get  drunk 
three  times  a  week,  pretend  that  Lam- 
bert — who.  by  the  admission  of  his  enemy 
McEwen,  has  not  been  drunk  once  these 
last  five  years — is  an  habitual  drunkard, 
and  that  they,  of  all  people,  are  shocked 
at  it.  Need  I  say  that  these  detractors 
from  merit  and  misfortune  are  anonymous 
writers  in  the  "  Glasgow  Press."  It  does 
not  follow  they  are  all  natives  of  Glas- 
gow. Two  of  them,  at  least,  are  dirty 
.  little  penny-a-liners  from  London.  The 
jjroublic  knows  nothing  about  the  Press, 
ami  is  easily  gulled  by  it.  But  I  know- 
all  about  the  Press,  inside  and  out,  and 
shall  reveal  the  true  motive  of  the  little 
,  newspaper  conspiracy  against  Lambert 
and  Reade.  It  is  just  the  jealousy  of  the 
little  provincial  scribbler  maddened  by 
the  overwhelming  superiority  of  the  na- 
tional writer.  I'll  put  the  minds  of  these 
quill-drivers  into  words  for  you.  "  Curse 
it  all  I  there  was  a  hero  and  a  martyr  in 
our  midst,  and  we  hadn't  the  luck  to 
spot  him.  [In  reality  they  had  not  brains 
enough  in  their  skulls  nor  blood  enough 
in  their  hearts  to  spot  him.  But  it  is 
their  creed,  that  superior  discern ment  is 
all  luck.]  Then  comes  this  cursed  En- 
glishman and  hits  the  theme  we  missed. 
What  can  we  pigmies  do  now  to  pass  for 


giants  ?  It's  no  use  our  telling  the  truth 
and  playing  second  fiddle.  No — our  only 
chance  now,  to  give  ourselves  importance, 
is  to  hiss  down  both  the  hero  and  his 
chronicler.  If  we  call  Lambert  an  im- 
postor and  a  drunkard,  and  Reade  a  mer- 
cenary fool,  honest  folk  will  never  divine 
that  we  are  ourselves  the  greatest  drunk- 
ards, the  greatest  dunces  and  the  most 
habitual  liars  in  the  city."  That  was  the 
little  game  of  the  Glasg-ow  penny-a-liners, 
and  twopence  a-liars ;  and  every  man  in 
Scotland,  who  knows  the  provincial  Press, 
saw  through  these  caitiffs  at  a  glance. 
But  the  public  is  weak  and  credulous. 
Now,  they  mig-ht  as  well  bay  the  moon 
as  bark  at  me  ;  I  stand  too  high  above 
their  reach  in  the  just  respect  of  the  civil- 
ized world.  But  they  can  hurt  James 
Lambert,  because  he  is  their  townsman. 
Therefore,  I  interfere  and  give  the  citi- 
zens of  Glasgow  the  key  to  the  Glasgow 
backbiters  of  a  Glasgow  hero  and  mar- 
tyr. I  add  one  proof  that  this  is  the  true 
key.  The  exploits  and  the  calamity  of 
James  Lambert  were  related  by  Hugh 
Macdonald  eighteen  years  ago  when 
proofs  were  plentiful.  If  they  were  true 
eighteen  years  ago  how  can  they  be  false 
now  ?  Answer  me  that,  honest  men  of 
Glasgow,  who  don't  scribble  in  papers 
and  call  black  white.  Can  facts  be  true 
when  told  by  a  Glasgow  man,  yet  turn 
false  when  told  by  an  Englishman  ???!!! 
Now  observe — they  might  have  shown 
their  clanmshness  as  nobly  as  they  have 
shown  it  basely.  There  are  brave  men  in 
England — many;  and  unfortunate  men — 
many ;  whom  a  powerful  English  writer 
could  celebrate.  But  no — he  selects  a 
Scotchman  for  his  theme,  and  makes  the 
great  globe  admire  him,  and  moves  En- 
gland to  pity  him  and  provide  for  him. 
Any  Scotch  writer  worthy  of  the  name 
of  Scotchman,  or  man,  observing  this, 
wtouM  have  said :  "  Well,  this  English 
chap  is  not  narrow  -  minded  anyway. 
You  need  not  be  a  Cockney  to  win  his 
heart  and  gain  his  pen.  He  is  warmer 
about  this  Glasgow  man,  than  we  ever 
knew  him  to  be  about  a  south  country- 
man. It  is  a  good  example.  Let  us  try 
and   rise   to   his  level,  and   shake  hands 


230 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


with  the  Southron  over  poor  Jamie  Lam- 
bert "  This  is  how  every  Scotchman, 
worthy  of  the  name,  would  have  felt  and 
argued.  But  these  Glasgow  scribblers 
are  few  of  them  Scotchmen,  and  none  of 
them  men.  The  line  they  have  taken  in 
vilifying  a  blind  man.  who  lost  his  sight 
by  benevolent  heroism,  is  one  thai  hell 
chuckles  at.  and  man  recoils  from.  They 
have  disgraced  the  city  of  Glasgow  and 
human  nature  itself.  Whatever  may  be 
the  faults  of  the  working  classes,  they 
are  MEN.  Anonymous  slanderers  and 
del  ractors  are  Dot  men — they  are  mere 
lumps  of  human  filth.  I  therefore  ask 
-  ii  ives  of  <  Hasgow,  and  i  he  man- 
ly citizens,  to  shake  off  these  lumps  of 
dirt  and  detraction,  and  aid  me  to  take 
the  Glasgow  hero  and  martyr  out  of  all 
'list  roubles. 

The  Frenchman  1  have  mentioned  had 
one    great     title     to     sympathy,     v 
Lambert      has     two;     and     this    is    how 
France    i  real  heroic    son  :     He 

mi  he  public  expense,  bul  free 
as  air.  The  public  benefactor  was  not 
locked    up  ami    hidden   from  the  public. 

His  breast   was  emblazoned  With    medals. 

and   among    bhem    shone   ti 
i  kraal  order.  :  he  <  Iross  of  I  he  Legion  of 
Honor,  which  many  distinguished  noble- 
men and    gentlemen  have  sighed    for  in 
vain-,  and  when  he  walked  abroad  every 

nan  in  the  count  ry  dolled  his  hat 
to  him.  Thus  does  Prance  treat  a  great 
saver  of  human  lives.  James  Lambert 
lives  at  the  public  expense,  but  not  as 
thai  Frenchman  lived.  It  grieves  my 
heart  to  say  it  :  but  the  truth  is,  James 
Lambert  lives  unhappily.  He  is  in  an 
almshouse,  winch  partakes  of  the  i 
ter  of  a  prison.  It  is  a  gloomy,  austere 
place,  and  that  class  of  inmates,  to  which 
he  belongs,  are  not  allowed  to  cross  the 
Threshold  upon  their  own  business,  ex- 
cept once  in  a  fortnight.  But  to  ardent 
spirits  loss  of  liberty  is  misery.  Meanly 
clad,  poorly  fed,  well  imprisoned,  and 
little  respected— such  is  the  condition  of 
James  Lambert  in  Glasgow,  his  native 
city.  Yet  he  is  the  greatest  man  in  that 
city,  and  one  of  the  very  few  men  now  liv- 
ing in  it,  whose  name  will  ring  in  history 


a  hundred  years  hence;  the  greatest 
saver  of  lives  in  Europe;  a  man  whose 
name  is  even  now  honored  in  India 
and  Australia,  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada,  and  indeed  from  the  rising  to 
the  setting  sun,  thanks  to  his  own  merit. 
the  power  of  the  pen,  and  the  circi 
of  the  Press — a  true  hero  and  a  true 
mart  \  r.  glorious  by  his  deeds  and  sacred 
by  his  calamity. 


DEATH  OF  WINWOOD  READE. 

i   the  "  Daily   Telegraph  " 
{April  36,  : 

We  regret    to  announce  the  death   of 
Mr.  Win  wood  Reade,   well   known 

African  traveler  and  correspondent,  and 
by    many   works  of    indubitable    power. 

emarkable  man    closed,  on    Satur- 
day   last,    April    24,   a    laborious    career. 

with  few  of  Fortune's 
As  a  youth  he  had  shown  a  singular 
taste  for  natural  science.  This,  how- 
ever, was  interrupted  for  some  years 
by  University  studies,  and  afterward  by 
an  honest  but  unavailing  attempt  to 
master  the  art  of  Fiction,  before  pos- 
sufficienl   experience  of  life.     He 

ed,  however,  two  or  three  novels 
containing  some   good  and  racy   ■ 
iinskillt'iilly    <  and    one 

Saw")    which    is   a    well-const  run  ,■.. 

He  also  published  an  archaeo  ■■•. 
nine,  entitled  ••'The  Vale  of  Isis."  The 
theories  of  M.  du  Chaillu  as  to  the 
power  and  aggressive  character  of  the 
gorilla  inflamed  Mr.  Reade's  curiosity 
and  awakened  his  dormant  genius.  He 
raised  money  upon  his  inheritanci 
set  out  for  Africa  fully  equipped.  He 
hunted  the  gorilla  persistently,  and 
found  him  an  exceedingly  timorous  ani- 
mal, inaccessible  to  European  sports- 
men   in    the   thick   jungles  which   he   in- 


READIANA. 


231 


habits.  Mr.  Reade  then  pushed  his 
researches  another  way.  On  his  return 
he  published  "  Savage  Africa,"  a  re- 
markable book,  both  in  matter  and 
style. 

After  some  years,  devoted  to  general 
science  and  anonymous  literature,  he  re- 
visited that  continent — "  whose  fatal  fas- 
cinations," as  he  himself  wrote,  "  no  one 
having  seen  and  suffered,  can  resist," 
and  this  time  penetrated  deep  into  the  in- 
terior. In  this  expedition  he  faced  many 
dangers  quite  alone,  was  often  stricken 
down  with  fever,  and  sometimes  in 
danger  of  his  life  from  violence,  and 
once  was  taken  prisoner  by  cannibals. 
His  quiet  fortitude  and  indomitable 
will  carried  a  naturally  feeble  body 
through  it  all,  and  he  came  home 
weak,  but  apparently  uninjured  in  con- 
stitution. He  now  published  two  vol- 
umes in  quick  succession — "The  Martyr- 
dom of  Man,"  and  the  "African  Sketch- 
book " — both  of  which  have  met  with 
warm  admiration  and  severe  censure. 
Mr.  Reade  was  now,  nevertheless,  gen- 
erally recognized  by  men  of  science,  and 
particularly  by  Dr.  Darwin  and  his  school. 
In  November,  1S73,  he  became  the  Times' s 
correspondent  in  the  Ashantee  war,  and, 
as  usual,  did  not  spare  himself.  From 
this,  his  third  African  expedition,  he  re- 
turned a  broken  man.  The  mind  had 
been  too  strong  for  the  body,  and  he  was 
obliged  to  halt  on  the  wray  home.  Early 
in  this  present  year,  disease,  both  of  the 
heart  and  lungs,  declared  itself,  and  he 
wasted  away  slowly  but  inevitably.  He 
wrote  his  last  work,  "The  Outcast,"  with 
the  hand  of  death  upon  him.  Two  zeal- 
ous friends  carried  him  out  to  Wimble- 
don, and  there,  for  a  day  or  two,  the  air 
seemed  to  revive  him ;  but  on  Friday 
night  he  began  to  sink,  and  on  Saturday 
afternoon  died,  in  the  arms  of  his  beloved 
uncle,  Mr.  Charles  Reade. 

The  writer  thus  cut  off  in  his  prime  en- 
tered life  with  excellent  prospects ;  he 
was  heir  to  considerable  estates,  and 
gifted  with  genius.  But  he  did  not  live 
long  enough  to  inherit  the  one  or  to  ma- 
ture the  other.  His  whole  public  career 
embraced  but  fifteen  years;  yet  in  another 


fifteen  he  would  probably  have  won  a  great 
name,  and  cured  himself,  as  many  think- 
ing men  have  done,  of  certain  obnoxious 
opinions,  which  laid  him  open  to  reasona- 
ble censure,  and  also  to  some  bitter  per- 
sonalities that  were  out  of  place,  since 
truth  can  surely  prevail  without  either 
burning  or  abusing  men  whose  convic- 
tions are  erroneous  but  honest.  He  felt 
these  acrimonious  comments,  but  bore 
them  with  the  same  quiet  fortitude  by  help 
of  which  he  had  endured  his  sufferings  in 
Africa,  and  now  awaited  the  sure  ap- 
proach of  an  untimely  death  at  home. 
Mr.  Reade  surpasses  most  of  the  travel- 
ers of  his  day  in  one  great  quality  of  a 
writer — style.  His  English,  founded  on 
historical  models,  has  the  pomp  and 
march  of  words,  is  often  racy,  often  pict- 
uresque, and  habitually  powerful  yet 
sober  :  ample  yet  not  turgid.  He  died 
in  his  thirty-seventh  year. 


CREMONA    FIDDLES. 


From   the    ••  Pall    Mall    Gazette. 


FIRST     LETTER. 

August  19tk,  1872. 

Under  this  heading,  for  want  of  a  bet- 
ter, let  me  sing  the  four-stringed  instru- 
ments, that  were  made  in  Italy  from 
about  1560  to  1760,  and  varnished  with 
high-colored  yet  transparent  varnishes, 
the  secret  of  which,  known  to  numberless 
families  in  1745,  had  vanished  off  the 
earth  by  1760,  and  has  now  for  fifty 
years  baffled  the  laborious  researches  of 
violin  makers,  amateurs,  and  chemists. 
That  lost  art  I  will  endeavor  to  restore 
to  the  world  through  the  medium  of  your 
paper.  But  let  me  begin  with  other  points 
of  connoisseurship,  illustrating  them  as 
far  as  possible  by  the  specimens  on  show 
at  the  South  Kensington  Museum. 


%-d-l 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


The  modern  orchestra  uses  four-stringed 
instruments,  played  with  the  bow ;  the 
smallest  is  the  king- ;  its  construction  is  a 
marvel  of  art ;  and,  as  we  are  too  apt  to 
underrate  familiar  miracles,  let  me  ana- 
lize  this  wooden  paragon,  by  way  of 
showing-  what  great  architects  in  wood 
those  Italians  were,  who  invented  this  in- 
strument and  its  fellows  at  Breschia  and 
Bologna.  The  violin  itself,  apart  from  its 
mere  accessories,  consists  of  a  scroll  or 
head,  weighing  an  ounce  or  two.  a  slim 
neck,  a  thin  back,  that  ought  to  be  made 
of  Swiss  sycamore,  a  thin  belly  of  Swiss 
deal,  and  sides  of  Swiss  sycamore  no 
thicker  than  a  sixpence.  This  little  wood- 
•  •li  shell  delivers  an  amount  of  sound  that 
is  simply  monstrous;  but,  to  do  that,  n 
must  submit  to  a  strain,  of  which  the 
public  has  no  conception.  Let  us  sup- 
pose two  Claimants  to  take  opposite 
ends  of  a  violin-string-,  and  to  pull 
againsl  each  other  with  all  their 
weigh!  :  the  tension  of  the  string  so  pro- 
duced would  qoI  equal  the  tension  which 
is  created  hy  1  he  screw  in  raising  thai 
string  to  conceri  pitch.  Consider,  then, 
thai  not  one  hut  four  strings  tug  nighl 
and  day.  like  a  team  of  demons,  at  the 
wafer-like  sides  of  this  wooden  shell. 
Why  does  it  not  collapse  ?  Well,  il  would 
collapse  with  a  crash,  long  before  tin- 
strings  reached  conceri  pitch,  if  thi 
was  not  a  wonder  inside  as  well  as  out. 
The  problem  was  to  w  it  list  and  that  severe 
pressure  without  crippling  the  vast  vibra- 
tion by  solidity.  The  inventors  ap- 
proached the  difficulty  thus  :  they  inserted 
six  blocks  of  lime,  or  some  light  wood  ; 
one  of  these  blocks  at  the  lower  end  of  the 
violin,  one  at  the  upper,  and  one  at  each 
corner — the  corner  blocks  very  small  and 
triangular;  the  top  and  bottom  blocks 
much  larger,  and  shaped  like  a  capital 
D.  the  straight  line  of  the  block  lying 
close  to  the  sides,  and  t  he  curved  line  out- 
ward. Then  they  slightly  connected  all 
the  blocks  by  two  sets  of  linings ;  these 
linings  are  not  above  a  quarter  of  an  inch 
deep,  I  suppose,  and  no  thicker  than  an 
old  penny  piece,  but  they  connect  those 
six  blocks  and  help  to  distribute  the  re- 
sist a  nee. 


Even  so  the  shell  would  succumb  in 
time;  but  now  the  inventor  killed  two 
birds  with  one  stone;  he  cunningly  divert- 
ed a  portion  of  the  pressure  by  the  very 
means  that  were  necessary  to  the  sound. 
He  placed  the  bridge  on  the  belly  of  the 
violin,  and  that  raised  the  strings  out  of 
the  direct  line  of  tension,  and  relieved  the 
lateral  pressure  at  the  expense  of  the 
belly.  But  as  the  belly  is  a  weak  arch,  it 
must  now  be  strengthened  in  its  turn. 
Accordingly,  a  bass-bar  was  glued  hori- 
zontally to  the  belly  under  one  toot  of  the 
bridge.  This  bass-bar  is  a  verj  small 
piece  of  deal,  about  the  length  and  half 
the  size  of  an  old-fashioned  lead  pencil, 
but,  the  ends  being  tapered  otf.  il  is 
on  to  the  belly,  with  a  spring  in  it.  and 
supports  the  belly  magically.  Asa  proof 
how  nicely  all  these  1  Iiiiil's  were  balanced, 
the  bass-bar  of  Gasparo  da  Salo,  the 
Amati,  and  Stradiuarius,  being  a  little 
shorter  and  shallower  than  a  modern 
bass-bar,  did  admirably  for  their  day.  yet 
will  not  do  now.  Our  raised  conceri 
i' i'li  has  clapped  on  more  tension,  and 
straightway  you  musl  remove  the  bass- 
bar  even  of  Stradiuarius.  and  substitute 
one  a  little  longer  and  deeper,  or  your 
Cremona  sounds  like  a  strung  frying- 
pan. 

Remove  now  from  the  violin,  which  for 
t  wo  cent  uries  lias  endured  this  st  rain.  1  be 
finger-board,  tail-piece,  tail-pin  and  screws 
— since  these  are  the  instruments  or 
vehicles  of  tension,  not  materials  of  re- 
sistance— and  weigh  the  violin  itself, 
weighs,  1  suppose,  about  twenty  ounces  : 
and  it  has  fought  hundredweights  of 
pressure  for  centuries.  A  marvel  of  con- 
struction, it  is  also  a  marvel  of  sound  :  it 
is  audible  further  otf  than  the  gigantic 
pianoforte,  ami  its  tones  in  a  master's 
hand  go  to  the  heart  of  man.  It  can  be 
prostituted  to  the  performance  of  difficul- 
ties, and  often  is ;  but  that  is  not  its  fault. 
Genius  can  make  your  very  heart  dance 
with  it,  or  your  eyes  to  fill;  and  Kiel 
Gow.  who  was  no  romancer,  but  only  a 
deeper  critic  than  his  fellows,  when  being 
asked  what  was  the  true  test  of  a  player, 
replied,  "A  mon  is  a  player  when  he 

CAN  GAR  HIMSEL'  GREET  Wl'  HIS  FIDDLE." 


READIAXA. 


233 


Asking'  forgiveness  for  this  preamble,  I 
proceed  to  inquire  what  country  invented 
these  four-stringed  and  four-cornered  in- 
struments ? 

I  understand  that  France  and  Germany 
have  of  late  raised  some  pretensions. 
Connoisseurship  and  etymology  are  both 
against  them.  Etymology  suffices.  The 
French  terms  are  all  derived  from  the 
Italian,  and  that  disposes  of  France.  I 
will  go  into  German  pretensions  critically, 
if  any  one  will  show  me  as  old  and  specific 
a  German  word  as  viola  and  violino,  and 
the  music  composed  for  those  German  in- 
struments. '•  Fiddle  "  is  of  vast  antiquity; 
Imii  pear-shaped,  till  Italy  invented  the 
four  corners,  on  which  sound  as  well  as 
beaut}'  depends. 

The  Ordek  of  Invention. — Etymology 
decides  with  unerring  voice  that  the  vio- 
loncello was  invented  after  the  violono  or 
double-bass,  and  connoisseurship  proves 
by  two  distinct  methods  that  it  was  in- 
vented after  the  violin.  1st,  the  critical 
method  :  it  is  called  after  the  violon,  yet 
is  made  on  the  plan  of  the  violin,  with 
arched  back  and  long  inner  bought. 
2d,  the  historical  method  :  a  violoncello 
made  by  the  inventors  of  the  violin  is  in- 
comparably rare,  and  this  instrument  is 
disproportionately  rare  even  up  to  the 
year  1610.  Violino  being-  a  derivative  of 
viola,  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
violin  followed  the  tenor  ;  but  this  taken 
alone  is  dangerous  ;  for  viola  is  not  only  a 
specific  term  for  the  tenor,  but  a  generic 
name  that  was  in  Italy  a  hundred  years 
before  a  tenor  with  four  strings  was  made. 
To  go  then  to  connoisseurship — I  find  that 
I  have  fallen  in  with  as  many  tenors  as 
violins  by  Gasparo  da  Salo,  who  worked 
from  about  1555  to  1600,  and  not  quite  so 
many  by  Gio  Paolo  Maggini,  who  began 
a  few  years  later.  The  violin  being  the 
king  of  all  these  instruments.  I  think 
there  would  not  be  so  many  tenors 
made  as  violins,  when  once  the  violin  had 
been  invented.  Moreover,  between  the 
above  dates  came  Corelli.  a  composer  and 
violinist.  He  would  naturally  create  a 
crop  of  violins.  Finding  the  tenors  and  vio- 
lins of  Gasparo  da  Salo  about  equal  in 
number.    I   am   driven   to  the  conclusion 


that  the  tenor  had  an  unfair  start — in 
other  words,  was  invented  first.  I  add  to 
this  that  true  four-stringed  tenors  by 
Gasparo  da  Salo  exist,  though  very  rare, 
made  with  only  two  corners,  which  is  a 
more  primitive  form  than  any  violin  by 
the  same  maker  appears  in.  For  this  and 
some  other  reasons,  I  have  little  doubt 
the  viola  preceded  the  violin  by  a  verj' 
few  years.  What  puzzles  me  more  is  to 
time  the  violon,  or,  as  we  childishly  call 
it  (after  its  known  descendant),  the 
double-bass.  If  I  was  so  presumptuous 
as  to  trust  to  my  eye  alone,  I  should  say 
it  was  the  first  of  them  all.  It  is  an  in- 
strument which  does  not  seem  to  mix 
with  these  four-stringed  upstarts,  but  to 
belong  to  a  much  older  family — viz.,  the 
viole  d'amore,  da  gamba,  etc.  In  the 
first  place  it  has  not  four  strings  ;  sec- 
ondly, it  has  not  an  arched  back,  but  a 
flat  back,  with  a  peculiar  shoulder,  copied 
from  the  viola  da  gamba  :  thirdly,  the 
space  between  the  upper  and  lower  corners 
in  i  he  early  specimens  is  ludicrously  short. 
And  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  an  eye. 
which  had  observed  the  graceful  propor- 
tions of  the  tenor  and  violin,  could  be 
guilty  of  such  a  wretched  little  inner 
bought  as  you  find  in  a  double-bass  of 
Brescia.  Per  contra,  it  must  be  admitted 
first,  that  the  sound-hole  of  a  Brescia n 
double-bass  seems  copied  from  the  four- 
stringed  tribe,  and  not  at  all  from  the 
elder  family  :  secondly,  that  the  violin  and 
tenor  are  instruments  of  melody  or  ha  r- 
mony.  but  the  violon  of  harmony  only. 
This  is  dead  against  its  being  invented 
until  after  the  instruments  to  which  it  is 
subsidiary.  Man  invents  only  to  supply 
a  want.  Thus,  then,  it  is.  First,  the 
large  tenor,  played  between  the  knees ; 
then  the  violon.  played  under  the  chin  ; 
then  (if  not  the  first  of  them  all)  the  small 
double-bass:  then,  years  after  the  violin, 
the  violoncello  :  then  the  full-sized  double- 
bass  ;  then,  longo  intervallo,  the  small 
tenor,  played  under  the  chin. 

However.  I  do  not  advance  these  con- 
clusions as  infallible.  The  highest  evi- 
dence on  some  of  these  points  must  surely 
lie  in  manuscript  music  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  much  of   which   is   preserved    in 


234 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


the  libraries  of  Italy  ;  and.  if  Mr.  Hatton 
or  any  musician  learned  in  the  history  of 
his  art  will  tell  me  for  what  stringed  in- 
struments the  immediate  predecessors  of 
Corelli,  and  Corelli  at  his  commencement 
marked  their  compositions,  I  shall  receive 
the  communication  with  gratitude  and 
respect.  I  need  hardly  say  thai  nothing 
but  the  MS.  or  the  editio  princeps  is  e^  1- 
dence  in  so  nice  a  matter. 

The  liisi  known  maker  of  the  true 
tenor,  and  probably  of  the  violin,  was 
Gasparo  da  Salo.  The  student  who  has 
read  the  valuable  work  pu1  forth  by 
Monsieur  Fetis  and  Monsieur  Vuillaume 
mighl  imagine  thai  1  am  contradicting 
them  here;  for  they  quote  as  "  luthiers" 
— antecedenl  to  Gasparo  da  Salo  Ker- 
lino,  Duiffoprugcar,  Linarolli,  D 
ami  others.  These  men.  I  granl  you, 
worked  long  before  Gasparo  da  - 
even  offer  an  independent  proof,  and  a 
very  simple  one.  I  find  thai  their  genuine 
tickets  are  in  Gothic  letters,  whereas 
t  hose  of  i  lasparo  da  sa  lo  are  in  Roman 
type;  bul  1  know  the  works  of  those 
makers,  and  they  did  nol  make  tenors  nor 
violins.  They  made  insl  ruments  of  i  he 
older  family,  viole  d'amore,  da  gamba, 
etc.  Their  true  tickets  are  all  black-letter 
tickets,  and  not  one  such  ticket  ei 
any  old  violin,  nor  in  a  single 
tenor.  The  fact  is  that  the  tenor  is  an 
instrument  of  unfixed  dimensions, 
easily  be  reconstructed  oul  of  differenl 
viole  made  in  an  earlier  age.  There  are 
innumerable  examples  of  this,  and  happily 
the  exhibition  furnishes  two.  There  are 
two  curious  inst  ruments  si  rung  as  tenors, 
Nos.  114  and  134  in  the  catalogue  :  one  is 
given  to  Joan  Carlino.  and  the  year  1452; 
the  other  to  Linaro,  and  1563.  These  two 
instruments  were  both  made  by  one  man. 
Ventura  Linarolli.  of  Venice  (misspelt  by 
M.  Fetis,  Venturi),  about  the  year  1520. 
Look  at  the  enormous  breadth  between 
the  sound-holes:  that  shows  they  were 
made  to  carry  six  or  seven  strings. 
Now  look  at  the  scrolls ;  both  of  them 
new,  because  the  old  scrolls  were  primi- 
tive things  with  six  or  seven  screws  :  it  is 
only  by  such  reconstruction  that  a  tenor 
or  violin  can  be  set  up  as  anterior  to  Gas- 


paro da  Salo.  No  114  is.  however,  a  real 
gem  of  antiquity  ;  the  wood  and  varnish 
exquisite,  and  far  fresher  than  nine 
Amatis  out  of  ten.  It  is  well  worthy  the 
special  attention  of  collectors.  It  was 
played  upon  the  knee. 

There  are  in  the  collection  two  instru- 
ments by  Gasparo  da  Salo  worth  especial 
notice  :  a  tenor.  No.  14'.'.  and  a  violono,  or 
primitive  double-bass,  199.  The  ten 
one  of  his  later  make,  yet  has  a  grand 
primitive  character.  <  >bserve,  in  particu- 
lar, the  scroll  all  round,  ami  the  amaz- 
ing in  between  the  bass  sound- 
hole  and  I  he  purfling  of  the  belly  ; 
this  instrument  and  the  grand  tenor  as- 
i  to  Mage-ini.  ;,,u)  ierit  b_v  Madame 
Risler,  oiler  a    poinl    of  connoisseurship 

worthy  t  he  si  udent  "s  at  tent  ion.   The  back 

of  each    instrument    looks  full  a  century 
younger  than  the  belly.     Hut  this  is  illu- 
sory.   The  simple  fact  is  thai  the  t 
of  that  day.  when   not    m   use,  were  not 
nursed  in  cases,  bul    hung  up  on  a   nail, 

belly  outward.  Thus  the  belly  caught 
the  sun  of  Italy,  the  dust,  etc..  and  its 
varnish    was     often    withered    to    a    mere 

resm.  while  t  he  back  and  sides 
This  is   the   key  to  that    little  mystery. 
1  Ibserve  t  he   scroll    of   the   violono    199  ! 
How    primitive    it    is    all    round:    ai 
hack  a    Hat    cut .  in    front   a  single  flute, 
copied  from  its  Inn   part  in',  the  viola 

ba.  This  scroll,  taken  in  conjunction 
with  the  si/.e  and  other  points,  marl  - 
instrument  considerably  anterior  to  No. 
200.  As  to  the  otherdouble  basses  in  the 
same  ease,  they  are  assigned  by  their 
owners  to  Gasparo  da  Salo,  because  they 
are  double  purhVd  and  look  older  than 
Cremonese  violins  :  but  these  indicia  are 
valueless  :  all  Cremona  and  Milan  double- 
purfled  the  violon  as  often  as  not  :  and 
the  constant  exposure  to  air  and  dusl 
gives  the  violono  a  color  of  antiquity-  i 
is  delusive.  In  no  one  part  of  the  busi- 
ness is  knowledge  of  work  so  necessary-. 
The  violoni  201-2-3,  are  all  fine  Italian 
instruments.  The  small  violon,  202,  that 
stands  by  the  side  of  the  Gasparo  da 
Salo,  199,  has  the  purfling  of  Andreas 
Amatus,  the  early  sound-hole  of  Andreas 
Amatus  :  the  exquisite  corners  and  finish 


KEADIAXA. 


235 


of  Andreas  Amatus  ;  the  finely  cut  scroll 
of  Andreas  Amatus  ;  at  the  back  of  scroll 
the  neat  shell  and  square  shoulder  of 
Andreas  Amatus  ;  and  the  back,  instead 
of  being-  made  of  any  rubbish  that  came 
to  hand,  after  the  manner  of  Brescia,  is 
of  true  fiddle  wood,  cut  the  bastard  way 
of  the  grain,  which  was  the  taste  of  the 
Amati ;  and,  finally,  it  is  varnished  with 
the  best  varnish  of  the  Amati.  Under 
these  circumstances,  I  hope  I  shall  not 
offend  the  owner  by  refusing-  it  the  infe- 
rior name  of  Gasparo  da  Salo.  It  is  one 
of  the  brightest  gems  of  the  collection, 
and  not  easily  to  be  matched  in  Europe. 


SECOND   LETTER. 
August  -2-ith.  1872. 

Gio  Paolo  Maggini  is  represented  at 
the  Kensington  Museum  by  an  excellent 
violin.  No.  Ill,  very  fine  in  workmanship 
and  varnish,  but  as  to  the  model  a  trifle 
too  much  hollowed  at  the  sides,  and  so  a 
little  inferior  to  some  of  his  violins,  and 
to  the  violin  No.  70,  the  model  of  which, 
like  many  of  the  Brescian  school,  is  simple 
and  perfect.  (Model  as  applied  to  a  violin, 
is  a  term  quite  distinct  from  outline.)  In 
No.  70  both  belly  and  back  are  modeled 
with  the  simplicity  of  genius,  by  even 
gradation,  from  the  center,  which  is  the 
highest  part,  down  to  all  the  borders  of 
the  instrument.  The  world  has  come 
back  to  this  primitive  model  after  trying 
a  score,  and  prejudice  gives  the  whole 
credit  to  Joseph  Guarnerius,  of  Cremona. 
As  to  the  date  of  No.  70,  the  neatness 
and.  above  all,  the  slimness  of  the  sound- 
hole,  mark,  I  think,  a  period  slightly  pos- 
terior to  Gasparo  da  Salo.  This  slim 
sound-hole  is  an  advance,  not  a  retro- 
gression. The  gaping  sound-holes  of 
Gasparo  da  Salo  and  Maggini  were  their 
one  great  error.  They  were  not  only  ugly: 
they  lessened  the  ring  by  allowing  the 
vibration  to  escape  from  the  cavity  too 
quickly.     No.  60,  assigned  to  Duiffoprug- 


car  and  a  fabulous  antiquity,  was  made 
by  some  'prentice  hand  in  the  seventeenth 
century  ;  but  No.  70  would  adorn  any 
collection,  being  an  old  masterpiece  of 
Brescia  or  Bologna. 

The  School  of  Cremona.— Andreas 
Amatus  was  more  than  thirty  years  old, 
and  an  accomplished  maker  of  the  older 
viole,  when  the  violin  was  invented  in 
Brescia  or  Bologna.  He  does  not  appear 
to  have  troubled  his  head  with  the  new 
instrument  for  some  years :  one  proof 
more  that  new  they  were.  They  would 
not  at  first  materially  influence  his  estab- 
lished trade  ;  the  old  and  new  family  ran 
side  by  side.  Indeed  it  took  the  violin 
tribe  two  centuries  to  drive  out  the  viola 
da  gamba.  However,  in  due  course, 
Andreas  Amatus  set  to  work  on  violins. 
He  learned  from  the  Brescian  school  the 
only  things  they  could  teach  a  workman 
so  superior — viz.,  the  four  corners  and  the 
sound-hole.  This  Brescian  sound-hole 
stuck  to  him  all  his  days  ;  but  what  he 
had  learned  in  his  original  art  remained 
by  him  too.  The  collection  contains  three 
specimens  of  his  handiwork :  Violin  202, 
Mrs.  Jay's  violin — with  the  modern  head 
— erroneously  assigned  to  Antonius  and 
Hieronymus ;  and  violoncello  No.  183. 
There  are  also  traces  of  his  hand  in  the 
fine  tenor  139.  In  the  three  instruments 
just  named  the  purfling  is  composed  in 
just  proportions,  so  that  the  wThite  comes 
out  with  vigor ;  it  is  then  inlaid  with 
great  neatness.  The  violoncello  is  the 
gem.  Its  outline  is  grace  itself  :  the  four 
exquisite  curves  coincide  in  one  pure  and 
serpentine  design.  This  bass  is  a  violin 
souffle :  were  it  shown  at  a  distance  it 
would  take  the  appearance  of  a  most  ele- 
gant violin  ;  the  best  basses  of  Stradiua- 
rius  alone  will  stand  this  test.  (Apply  it 
to  the  Venetian  masterpiece  in  the  same 
case.)  The  scroll  is  perfect  in  design  and 
chiseled  as  by  a  sculptor  ;  the  purfling  is 
quite  as  fine  as  Stradiuarius :  it  is  violin 
purfling-,  yet  this  seems  to  add  elegance 
without  meanness.  It  is  a  masterpiece 
of  Cremona,  all  but  the  hideous  sound- 
hole,  that  alone  connects  this  master  with 
the  Brescian  school. 

His    sons    Antonius    and    Hieronvmus 


236 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


soon  cured  themselves  of  that  grotesque 
sound-hole,  and  created  a  great  school. 
They  chose  better  wood  and  made  richer 
varnish,  and  did  many  beautiful  things. 
Nevertheless,  they  infected  Italian  fiddle- 
making  with  a  fatal  error.  They  were 
the  first  SCOOPERS.  Having  improved  on 
Brescia  in  outline  and  del  ails,  they  as- 
sumed too  hastily  thai  they  could  im- 
prove on  her  model.  So  they  scooped 
ou1  i  he  wood  about  the  sound-holts  and 
all  round,  weakening  the  connection  of 
i  he  center  with  the  sides  of  I  he  belly,  and 
cheeking  the  fullness  of  the  vibration. 
The  German  school  earned  this  vice 
much  further,  bill  the  Amati  went  too 
far,  and  inoculated  a  hundred  line  makers 
with  a  wrong  idea.  It  I  ook  St  radiuarius 
himself  fifty-six  years  to  gel  entirely  clear 
of  it. 

The  brol  hers  Amal  i  are  represented  in 
this  collection,  first  by  several  tenors  that 

mice  W  ere   nohle    I  bingS,    bul     ha\  e    been   CUl 

on  the  old  system,  which  was  downright 
wicked.  It  is  cutting  m  i  he  statutory 
sense  ;  \  }■/,.,  cutting  and  maiming.     These 

ruthless  men  just  sawed  a  crescent  oil'  the 
top,  and  another  oil'  the  bottom,  and  tin' 
result  is  a  thing  with  the  inner  bought  of 
a  giant  and  the  upper  and  lower  boughl 
of  a  dwarf.  If  one  of  these  noble  Lnsl  ru- 
ments  survives  in  England  uncut.  1  im- 
plore the  owner  to  spare  it  :  to  |>lay  on  a 
£5  tenor,  with  the  Amati  set  before  him 
to  look  at  while  he  plays.  Luckily  the 
scrolls  remain  to  us  ;  and  let  me  draw  at- 
tention to  the  scroll  of  136.  Look  at  the 
back  of  this  scroll,  and  see  how  it  is 
chiseled  -the  center  line  in  relief,  how 
sharp,  distinct,  and  fine;  this  line  is  ob- 
tained by  chiseling  out  the  wood  on  both 
sides  with  a  single  tool,  which  fiddle- 
makers  call  a  gauge,  and  there  is  nothing 
but  the  eye  to  guide  the  hand. 

There  are  two  excellent  violins  of  this 
make  in  the  collection — Mrs.  Jay's,  and 
the  violin  of  Mr.  C.  J.  Read,  No.  75. 
This  latter  is  the  large  pattern  of  those 
makers,  and  is  more  elegant  than  what 
is  technically  called  the  grand  Amati,  but 
not  so  striking.  To  appreciate  the  merit 
and  the  defect  of  this  instrument,  com- 
pare it  candidly  with  the  noble  Stradiua- 


rius  Amatise  that  hangs  by  its  side,  num- 
bered 82.  Take  a  back  view  first.  In 
outline  they  are  much  alike.  In  the  de- 
tails of  work  the  Amati  is  rather  su- 
perior ;  the  border  of  the  Stradiuarius  is 
more  exquisite;  but  the  Amati  scroll  is 
better  pointed  and  gauged  more  cleanly, 
the  purfling  better  composed  for  effect, 
and  the  way  that  purfling  is  let  in.  espe- 
cially at  the  corners,  is  incomparable. 
On  the  front  view  you  find  the  Amati  vio- 
lin is  scooped  out  here  and  I  here,  a  defect 
the  Si  radiuarius  has  avoided.  I  prefer 
the  Stradiuarius  sound-hole  per  st •:  but, 
if  you  look  at  the  curves  of  these  two 
violins,  you  will  observe  thai  the  Amati 
sound-holes  are  m  strict  harmony  with 
the  curves;  and  the  whole  thing'- the  pro- 
one  original  mind  thai  saw  its 
way. 

Nicholas  Amatus,  the  son  of  Hierony- 
mus,  owes  his  distinct  reputation  to  a 
called  by  connoisseurs  the 
(Irani!  \iiiaii.  This  is  a  very  large  vio- 
lin, with  extravagantly  long  corners,  ex- 
tremely fine  in  ail  the  details.  1  do  not 
think  it  was  much  admired  at  the  lime. 
At  all  events,  he  made  hut  few.  and  his 
copyists,  with  the  exception  of    Francesco 

Rugger,  rarel y  selected  thai  form  to  imi- 
tate. Bui  nowadays  these  violins  are  al- 
most worshiped,  and,  as  the  collection  is 
ilete  without  one,  I  hope  some  gen- 
tleman wjll  kindly  send  one  in  before  ,• 
closes.     There  is  also  wanting  an  Amati 

baSS,    and.    if    the     purchaser    of    Mr.    (iil- 
lott'S    Should    feel    disposed   1  o  supply  that 

gap,  it  would  be  a  very,  kind  act.  The 
Rugger  family  is  numerous;  it  is  repre- 
i  by  one  violin  (14)). 
Leaving  the  makers  of  the  Guarnerius 
family — five  in  number — till  the  last,  we 
come  to  Antonius  Stradiuarius.  This  un- 
rivaled workman  and  extraordinary  man 
was  born  in  1644,  and  died  in  December 
1737.  There  is  nothing  signed  with  his 
name  before  1667.  He  was  learning  his 
business  thoroughly.  From  that  date 
till  1736  he  worked  incessantly,  often 
varying  his  style,  and  always  improving, 
till  he  came  to  his  climax,  represented  in 
this  collection  by  the  violins  83  and  87, 
and  the  violoncello  188. 


READIAXA. 


237 


He  began  with  rather  a  small,  short- 
cornered  violin,  which  is  an  imitation  of 
the  small  Amati,  but  very  superior.  He 
went  on,  and  imitated  the  large  Amati, 
but  softened  down  the  corners.  For 
thirty  years  — from  1672  to  1703  — he 
poured  forth  violins  of  this  pattern ;  there 
are  several  in  this  collection,  and  one 
tenor,  139,  with  a  plain  back  but  a  beau- 
tiful belly,  and  in  admirable  preserva- 
tion. But,  while  he  was  making  these 
Amatise  violins  by  the  hundred,  he  had 
nevertheless  his  fits  of  originality,  and 
put  forth  an  anomaly  every  now  and 
then ;  sometimes  it  was  a  very  long, 
narrow  violin  with  elegant  drooping- 
corners,  and  sometimes,  in  a  happier 
mood,  he  combined  these  drooping  cor- 
ners with  a  far  more  beautiful  model. 
Of  these  varieties  No.  86  gives  just  an 
indication;  no  more.  These  lucid  inter- 
vals never  lasted  long,  he  was  back  to 
his  Amatis  next  week.  Yet  they  left, 
I  think,  the  germs  that  broke  out  so 
marvelously  in  the  next  century.  About 
the  year  1703  it  seems  to  have  struck  him 
like  a  revelation  that  he  was  a  greater 
man  than  his  master.  He  dropped  him 
once  and  forever,  and  for  nearly  twenty 
years  poured  forth  with  unceasing  fer- 
tility some  admirable  works,  of  which 
you  have  three  fine  examples,  under  av- 
erage wear,  hard  wear,  and  no  wear — 
90,  92,  91.  Please  look  at  the  three  vio- 
lins in  this  order  to  realize  wliat  I  have 
indicated  before— that  time  is  no  sure 
measure  of  events  in  this  business.  Nev- 
ertheless, in  all  these  exquisite  produc- 
tions there  was  one  tiling  which  he 
thought  capable  of  improvement — there 
was  a  slight  residue  of  the  scoop,  espe- 
cially at  the  lower  part  of  the  back. 
He  began  to  alter  that  about  1720,  and 
by  decrees  went  to  his  g-rand  model, 
in  which  there  is  no  scoop  at  all.  This. 
his  grandest  epoch,  is  represented  by  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge's  violin,  Mr.  Ark- 
wright's,  and  M.  le  Comte's :  this  last 
has  the  additional  characteristic  of  the 
stiffer  sound-hole  and  the  wood  left  broad 
in  the  wing  of  the  sound-hole.  One  feat- 
ure more  of  this  his  greatest  epoch :  the 
purfling,  instead  of  exactly  following  the 


corner,  is  pointed  across  n  in  a  manner 
completely  original.  He  made  these 
grand  violins  and  a  bass  or  two  till 
about  1729;  after  that  the  grand  model 
is  confined  to  his  violins,  and  the  details 
become  inferior  in  finish.  Of  this  there 
is  an  example  in  No.  84,  a  noble  but 
rough  violin,  in  parts  of  which  certain 
connoisseurs  would  see,  or  fancy  they 
saw,  the  hand  of  Bergonzi,  or  of  Fran- 
cesco or  Homobuono  Stradiuarius.  These 
workmen  undoubtedly  lived,  and  sur- 
vived their  father  a  few  years.  They 
seem  to  have  worked  up  his  refuse  wood 
after  his  death;  but  their  interference 
with  his  work  while  alive  has  been  ex- 
aggerated by  French  connoisseurs.  To 
put  a  difficult  question  briefly  :  their  the- 
ory fails  to  observe  the  style  Stradiuarius 
was  coming  to  even  in  1727;  it  also  ig- 
nores the  age  of  Stradiuarius  during  this 
his  last  epoch  of  work,  and  says  that 
there  exists  no  old  man's  work  by  Stradi- 
uarius himself  ;  all  this  old  man's  work 
is  done  by  younger  men.  However,  gen- 
eralities are  useless  on  a  subject  so  diffi- 
cult and  disputed.  The  only  way  is  to 
get  the  doubtful  violins  or  basses  and 
analyze  them,  and  should  the  Museum 
give  a  permanent  corner  to  Cremonese 
instruments,  this  Francesco  and  Homo- 
buono question  will  be  sifted  with  ex- 
amples. The  minutias  of  work  in  Stra- 
diuarius are  numerous  and  admirable, 
but  they  would  occupy  too  much  space 
am!  are  too  well  known  to  need  discourse. 
His  varnish  I  shall  treat  along  with  the 
others.  A  few  words  about  the  man. 
He  was  a  tall,  thin  veteran,  always  to 
be  seen  with  a  white  leathern  apron  and 
a  nightcap  on  his  head  ;  in  winter  it  was 
white  wool,  and  in  summer  white  cotton. 
His  indomitable  industry  had  amassed 
some  fortune,  and  '"'rich  as  Stradiuarius" 
was  a  by-word  at  Cremona,  but  probably 
more  current  among  the  fiddle-makers 
than  the  bankers  and  merchants.  His 
price  toward  the  latter  part  of  his  career 
was  four  louis  d'or  for  a  violin  ;  his  best 
customer's  Italy  and  Spain.  Mr.  Forster 
assures  us  on  unimpeachable  authority 
that  he  once  sent  some  instruments  into 
England  on  sale  or  return,  and  that  thev 


238 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


were  taken  back,  the  merchant  being  un- 
able to  get  £5  for  a  violoncello.  What 
ho!  Hang-  all  the  Englishmen  of  That 
clay  who  are  alive  to  meet  their  deserts  ! 
However,  the  true  point  of  the  incident 
is,  I  think,  missed  by  t  he  narrators.  The 
fact  is  that  then,  as  now,  England  wanted 
old  Cremonas,  not  new  ones.  That  the 
Aniati  had  a  familiar  reputation  here  and 
probably  a  ready  market  can  be  proved 
rather  prettily  out  of  the  mouth  of  Dean 
Swift.  A  violin  was  left  on  a  chair.  A 
lady  swept  by.  Her  mantua  caught  it 
and  knocked  it  down  and  broke  it.  Then 
t  he  witty  Dean  applied  a  line  in  Virgil's 
"  Eclogue :  " 
"Mantua  vbb  miserse  nimiura  vicina  Cremonae." 

This  was  certainly  said  during  the  life- 
time of  Stradiuarius,  and  proves  thai  the 
Cremona  fiddle  had  a  fixed  reputation  ;  it 
also  proves  thai  an  Irishman  could  make 
a  better  Latin  pun  1  ha  n  any  old  Roman 
has  left  behind  him.  Since  1  have  di- 
into  what  some  brute  calls  anec 
.  let  me  conclude  this  article  with 
one  thai  is  at  all  events  to  the  point, 
since  it  tolls  the  eventful  history  of  an  hi- 
st rumen t  now  on  si 

The  Romance  of  Fiddle  Dealing. 
Nearly  fifty  years  age  a  gaunl  Italian 
called  Luigi  Tarisio  arrived  in  Paris  one 
day  with  a  lot  of  old  Italian  instruments 
by  makers  whoso  names  were  hardly 
known.  The  principal  dealers,  whose 
minds  were  narrowed,  as  is  often  the 
case,  to  three  or  four  makers,  would  not 
deal  with  him.  M.  Georges  Chanot, 
younger  and  more  intelligent,  purchased 
largely,  and  encouraged  him  to  return. 
He  came  back  next  year  witli  a  better 
lot. :  and  yearly  increasing  his  funds,  he 
flew  at  the  highest  game;  and  in  the 
course  of  thirty  years  imported  nearly  all 
the  finest  specimens  of  Stradiuarius  and 
Guarnerius  France  possesses.  He  was 
the  greatest  connoisseur  that  ever  lived 
or  ever  can  live,  because  he  had  the  true 
mind  of  a  connoisseur  and  vast  opportu- 
nities. He  ransacked  Italy  before  the 
tickets  in  the  violins  of  Francesco  Stra- 
diuarius, Alexander  Gagliano,  Lorenzo 
Guadagnini,    Giofredus  Cappa,  Gobetti, 


Morgilato  Morella,  Antonio  Mariani, 
Santo  Maggini,  and  Matteo  Benti  of 
Brescia,  Michel  Angelo  Bergonzi,  Mon- 
tagnana,  Thomas  Balestrieri,  Storioni, 
Vicenzo  Rugger,  the  Testori,  Petrus  Gu- 
arnerius of  Venice,  and  full  fifty  more, 
had  been  tampered  with,  that  every  bril- 
liant masterpiece  might  be  assigned  to 
some  popular  name.  To  his  immortal 
credit,  he  fought  against  this  mania,  and 
his  motto  was  ••  A  tout  seigneur  tout  hon- 
neur."  The  man's  whole  soul  was  in 
fiddles.  He  was  a  great  dealer,  but  a 
greater  amateur.  He  had  gems  by  him 
no  money  would  buy  from  him.  No.  91 
was  one  of  them.  But  for  his  death  you 
would  never  have  cast  eyes  on  it.  He 
has  often  talked  to  me  of  it  :  but  he  u  ould 
never  let  me  see  it.  for  fear  I  should 
tempi    him. 

W  ell,  one  day  Georges  Chanot.  Senior. 
who  is  perhaps  the  best  judge  of  violins 
left,  now  Tarisio  is  gone,  made  an  excur- 
sion to  Spam,  to  see  if  he  could  find  any- 
thing there.  He  found  mighty  little. 
Put.  coming  to  the  shop  of  a  fiddle- 
maker,  one    Ortega,  he    saw    the    belly  of 

an  old  bass  hung  up  with  other  ibm^s. 
(bed  Ins  eye-.  :inil  asked  him- 
self, was  no  dreaming?  the  belly  of  a 
Stradiuarius  bass  roasting  m  a  shop-win- 
dow !  He  went  in.  and  very  soon  boughl 
it  for  about  fort \  francs.  He  then  ascer- 
tained that  the  bass  belonged  to  a  lady 
of  rank.  "The  belly  was  full  of  cracks: 
so.  not  to  make  two  bites  of  a  cherry, 
had  made  a  nice  new  one.  Cha- 
not carried  this  precious  fragmenl  home 
and  hung  it  up  in  his  shop,  but  not  in  the 
window,  for  he  is  too  grood  a  judge  not  to 
know  the  sun  will  take  all  the  color  out 
of  that  maker's  varnish.  Tarisio  came 
in  from  Italy,  and  his  eye  lighted  instant- 
ly on  the  Stradiuarius  belly.  He  pestered 
Chanot  till  the  latter  sold  it  him  for  a 
thousand  francs  and  told  him  where  the 
rest  was.  Tarisio  no  sooner  knew  this 
than  he  flew  to  Madrid.  He  learned  from 
Ortega  where  the  lady  lived,  and  called 
on  her  to  see  it.  "Sir,"  says  the  lady, 
"it  is  at  your  disposition.'*  That  doesnot 
mean  much  in  Spain.  When  he  offered 
to  buy  it,  she  coquetted  with  him,  said  it 


READIANA. 


•239 


had  been  long  in  her  family  ;  money  could 
not  replace  a  thing-  of  that  kind,  and  in 
short,  she  put  on  the  screw,  as  site  thought, 
and  sold  it  him  for  about  four  thousand 
francs.  What  he  did  with  the  Ortega 
belly  is  not  known — perhaps  sold  it  to 
some  person  in  the  toothpick  trade.  He 
sailed  exultant  for  Paris  with  the  Span- 
ish bass  in  a  case.  He  never  let  it  out  of 
his  sight.  The  pair  were  caught  by  a 
storm  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  The  ship 
rolled ;  Tarisio  clasped  his  bass  tight, 
and  trembled.  It  was  a  terrible  gale. 
and  for  one  whole  day  they  were  in  real 
danger.  Tarisio  spoke  of  it  to  me  with  a 
shudder.  I  will  give  you  his  real  words, 
for  they  struck  me  at  the  time,  and  I 
have  often  thought  of  them  since  — 

"  Ah,  my  poor  Mr.  Reade,  the  bass 
of  Spain  was  all  but  lost." 

Was  not  this  a  true  connoisseur?  a 
genuine  enthusiast  ?  Observe!  there  was 
also  an  ephemeral  insect  called  Luigi 
Tarisio,  who  would  have  gone  down  with 
the  bass:  but  that  made  no  impression 
on  his  mind.  Dc  minimis  non  curat 
Ludovicus. 

He  got  it  safe  to  Paris.  A  certain 
high  priest  in  these  mysteries,  called 
Vuillaume.  with  the  help  of  a  sacred  ves- 
sel, called  the  glue-pot,  soon  re-wedded 
the  back  and  sides  to  the  belly,  and  the 
bass  being  now  just  what  it  was  when  the 
ruffian  Ortega  put  his  finger  in  the  pie, 
was  sold  for  20,000  fr.  (800/.). 

I  saw  the  Spanish  bass  in  Paris  twenty - 
two  years  ago,  and  you  can  see  it  any 
day  this  month  you  like  ;  for  it  is  the 
identical  violoncello  now  on  show  at  Ken- 
sington, numbered  188.  Who  would  di- 
vine its  separate  adventures,  to  see  it  all 
reposing  so  calm  and  uniform  in  that 
case — "Post  tot  naufragia  tutus." 


THIRD    LETTER. 

August  27th,  1872. 

"The  Spanish  bass"  is  of  the  grand 
pattern  and  exquisitely  made  :  the  sound- 


hole,  rather  shorter  and  stiller  than  in 
Stradiuarius's  preceding  epoch,  seems 
stamped  out  of  the  wood  with  a  blow, 
so  swiftly  and  surely  is  it  cut.  The  pur- 
fling  is  perfection.  Look  at  the  section 
of  it  in  the  upper  bought  of  the  back. 
The  scroll  extremely  elegant.  The  belly 
is  a  beautiful  piece  of  wood.  The  back 
is  of  excellent  quality,  but  mean  in  the 
figure.  The  sides  are  cut  the  wrong 
way  of  the  grain  ;  a  rare  mistake  in 
this  master.  The  varnish  sweet,  clear, 
orange-colored,  and  full  of  fire.  Oh,  if 
this  varnish  could  but  be  laid  on  the 
wood  of  the  Sanctus  Seraphin  bass  !  The 
belly  is  full  of  cracks,  and  those  cracks 
have  not  been  mended  without  several 
lines  of  modern  varnish  clearly  visible 
to  the  practiced  e3'e. 

Some  years  ago  there  was  a  Stradi- 
uarius  bass  in  Ireland.  I  believe  it  was 
presented  by  General  Oliver  to  Signor 
Piatti.  I  never  saw  it ;  but  some  people 
tell  me  that  in  wood  and  varnish  it  sur- 
passes the  Spanish  bass.  Should  these 
lines  meet  Signor  Piatti's  eye,  I  will  only 
say  that,  if  he  would  allow  it  to  be  placed 
in  the  case  for  a  single  week,  it  would  be 
a  great  boon  to  the  admirers  of  these 
rare  and  noble  pieces,  and  very  instruc- 
tive. By  the  side  of  the  Spanish  bass 
stands  another,  inferior  to  it  in  model 
and  general  work,  superior  to  it  in  pres- 
ervation, No.  1ST.  The  unhappy  parts 
are  the  wood  of  the  sides  and  the  scroll. 
Bad  wood  kills  good  varnish.  The  scroll 
is  superb  in  workmanship ;  it  is  more 
finely  cut  at  the  back  part  than  the 
scroll  of  the  Spanish  bass;  but  it  is  cut 
out  of  a  pear  tree,  and  that  abominable 
wood  gets  uglier  if  possible  under  var- 
nish, and  lessens  the  effect  even  of  first- 
class  work.  On  the  other  hand,  the  back 
and  belly,  where  the  varnish  gets  fair 
play,  are  beautiful.  The  belly  is  incom- 
parable. Here  is  the  very  finest  ruby 
varnish  of  Stradiuarius,  as  pure  as  the 
day  it  was  laid  on.  The  back  was 
the  same  color  originally,  but  has  been 
reduced  in  tint  by  the  friction  this  part 
of  a  bass  encounters  when  played  on. 
The  varnish  on  the  back  is  chipped  all 
over  in   a    manner  most  picturesque    to 


240 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


the  cultivated  eye ;  only  it  must  go  no 
further.  I  find  on  examination  that 
these  chips  have  all  been  done  a  good 
many  years  ago,  and  I  can  give  you  a 
fair,  though  of  course  not  an  exact,  idea 
of  the  process.  Methinks  I  see  an  old 
gentleman  seated  sipping  his  last  glass 
of  port  in  the  dining-room  over  a  shining 
table,  whence  the  cloth  was  removed  for 
dessert.  He  wears  a  little  powder  still, 
though  no  longer  the  fashion  :  he  has  do 
shirt-collar,  but  a  roll  of  soft  and  snowy 
cambric  round  his  neck,  a  plain  gold  pin, 
and  a  frilled  bosom.  He  lias  a  white 
waistcoat — snow-white  like  his  linen  :  lie 
washes  at  home — and  a  blue  coat  with 
gill  buttons.  Item,  a  Large  fob  or  watch- 
pocket,  whence  bulges  a  golden  turnip, 
ami  puts  forth  seed,  to  wit,  a  bunch  of 
seals  and  watch-keys,  with  perhaps  a 
gold  pencil-case.  One  of  these  seals  is 
larger  than  the  others :  the  family  arms 
are  engraved  on  it,  and  only  important 
letters  are  signed  with  it.  He  rises  and 
goes  to  the  drawing-room.  The  piano  is 
opened:  a  servant  brings  the  Stradiua- 
rius  bass  f r the  stud\  ;  the  old  gentle- 
man takes  it  and  tunes  it.  and.  not  to  be 
bothered  with  his  lapels,  buttons  his 
coat,  and  plays  his  part  in  a  quartet  of 
Haydn  or  a  symphony  of  Corelli,  and 
smiles  as  he  plays,  because  he  really 
loves  music,  and  is  not  overweighted. 
Your  modern  amateur,  with  a  face  of 
justifiable  agony,  plows  the  hill  of  Bee- 
thoven and  harrows  the  soul  of  Reade. 
Nevertheless,  my  smiling  senior  is  all 
the  time  bringing  the  finest  and  mosl 
delicate  varnish  of  Stradiuarius  into  a 
series  of  gentle  collisions  with  the  follow- 
ing objects — First,  the  gold  pin:  then 
t  he  t  wo  rows  of  brass  buttons  ;  and  last. 
not  least,  the  male  chatelaine  of  the 
period.  There  is  an  oval  chip  just  off 
the  center  of  this  bass ;  I  give  the 
armorial  seal  especial  credit  for  that  : 
"  a  tout  seigneur  tout   honneur." 

Take  another  specimen  of  eccentric 
wear :  the  red  Stradiuarius  kit  88.  The 
enormous  oval  wear  has  been  done  thus — 
It  has  belonged  to  a  dancing-master,  and 
he  has  clapped  it  under  his  arm  fifty 
times  a  day  to  show  his  pupils  the  steps. 


The  Guarnerius  family  consisted  of  An- 
dreas, his  two  sons  Petrus  and  Joseph,  his 
grandson  Petrus  Guarnerius  of  Venice 
and  Joseph  Guarnerius.  the  greatest  of 
the  family,  whom  Mons.  Fetis  considers 
identical  with  Guiseppe  Antonio,  born  in 
1683.  There  are.  however,  great  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  this  theory,  wine 
I  will  reserve  for  my  miscellaneous  re- 
ma  rks. 

Andreas  Guarnerius  was  the  closest  ol 
all  the  copyists  of  the  Amati ;  so  close. 
indeed,  thai  his  genuine  violins  are  nearly 
always  sold  as  Amati.  Unfortunately  he 
imitated  the  small  pattern.  His  wood 
and  varnish  are  exactly  like  Amati  :  there 
is.  however,  a  peculiar  way  of  cut  ting  the 
low  er  wing  of  Ins  sound-holes  t  hat  bet  rays 
lii iii  at  once.  When  you  find  him  with 
the  border  high  and  broad,  and  the  pur- 
fling  grand,  you  may  suspecl  his  son  Pe- 
trus of  helping  him,  for  his  own  style  is 
petty.  His  basses  few,  but  line.  Petrus 
( luarnerius  of  ( Iremona  makes  violins  pro- 
digiously bombSs,  and  more  adapted  to 
grumbling  inside  than  singing  out  ;  hut 
their  appearance  magnificent:  a  grand 
deep  honier.  very  noble,  sound-hole  and 
scroll  Amatise,  and  a  deep  orange  varnish 
Hiat  nothing  can  surpass.  His  violins 
are  singularly  -cane  m  England.  I  hope 
to  see  one  at  the  Exhibition  before  ii 
closes. 

Joseph.  Ins  brother,  is  a  thorough  origi- 
nal. His  violins  are  narrowed  under  the 
shoulder  in  a  way  all  his  own.  As  to 
model,  his  fiddles  are  bombes,  like  his 
brother's;  and,  as  the  center  has  gen- 
erally sunk  from  weakness,  the  violin 
presents  a  great  bump  at  the  upper  part 
and  another  at  the  lower.  The  violin  97 
is  by  this  maker,  and  is  in  pure  and  per- 
fect condition  ;  but  the  wood  having  no 
figure,  the  beauty  of  the  varnish  is  not  ap- 
preciated. He  is  the  king  of  the  varnish- 
ers:  he  was  the  first  man  at  Cremona  that 
used  red  varnish  oftener  than  pale,  anil 
in  that  respect  was  the  teacher  even  of 
Stradiuarius.  When  this  maker  deviates 
from  his  custom  and  puts  really  good 
hare-wood  into  a  violin,  then  his  glorious 
varnish  gets  fair  play,  and  nothing  can 
live  beside  him.     The  other  day  a  violin 


KEAD1ANA. 


241 


of  this  make  with  fine  wood,  but  under- 
sized, was  put  up  at  an  auction  without 
a  name.  I  suppose  nobodj-  knew  the 
maker,  for  it  was  sold  on  its  merits, 
and  fetched  £160.  I  brought  that  violin 
into  the  country  ;  gave  a  dealer  £24  for 
it  in  Paris. 

He  made  a  very  few  flatter  violins,  that 
arc  worth  anjr  money. 

Petrus  Guarnerius,  the  son  of  this  Jo- 
seph, learned  his  business  in  Cremona, 
but  migrated  early  to  Venice.  He  worked 
there  from  1 7"25  to  1740.  He  made  most 
beautiful  tenors  and  basses,  but  was  not 
so  happy  in  his  violins.  His  varnish  very 
fine,  but  paler  than  his  father's. 

Joseph  Guarnerius,  of  Cremona,  made 
violins  from  about  1725  to  1745.  His  first 
epoch  is  known  only  to  connoisseurs  ;  in 
outline  it  is  hewed  out  under  the  shoul- 
der like  the  fiddles  of  Joseph,  son  of  An- 
drew, who  was  then  an  old  Addle- maker  ; 
but  the  model  all  his  own  ;  even,  regular, 
and  perfect.  Sound-hole  long  and  char- 
acteristic, head  rather  mean  for  him  :  he 
made  but  few  of  these  essays,  and  then 
went  to  a  different  and  admirable  style, 
a  most  graceful  and  elegant  violin,  which 
has  been  too  loosely  described  as  a  copy 
of  Stradiuarius;  it  is  not  that,  but  a  fine 
violin  in  which  a  downright  good  work- 
man profits  by  a  great  contemporary  ar- 
tist's excellences,  yet  without  servility. 
These  violins  are  not  longer  nor  stiffer 
in  the  inner  bought  than  Stradiuarius  : 
they  are  rather  narrow  than  broad  below, 
cut  after  the  plan  of  Stradiuarius,  though 
not  so  well,  in  the  central  part,  the  sound- 
holes  exquisitely  cut,  neither  too  stiff  nor 
too  flowing,  the  wood  between  the  curves 
of  the  sound-holes  remarkably  broad. 
The  scroll  grandiose,  yet  well-cut,  and 
the  nozzle  of  the  scroll  and  the  little  plat- 
form. They  are  generally  purfled  through 
both  pegs,  like  Stradiuarius  ;  the  wood 
very  handsome,  varnish  a  rich  golden 
brown.  I  brought  three  of  this  epoch 
into  the  country  ;  one  was  sold  the  other 
day  at  Christie's  for  £260  (bought,  I  be- 
lieve, by  Lord  Dunmore),  and  is  worth 
£350  as  prices  go.  This  epoch,  unfortu- 
nately, is  not  yet  represented  in  the  col- 
lection. 


The  next  epoch  is  nobly  represented 
by  93,  94,  95.  All  these  violins  have 
the  broad  center,  the  grand  long  inner 
bought,  stiffish  yet  not  ungraceful,  the 
long  and  rather  upright  sound-hole,  but 
well  cut ;  the  grand  scroll,  cut  all  in  a 
hurry,  but  noble.  93  is  a  little  the  grand- 
er in  make.  I  think;  the  purfiing  being- 
set  a  hair's  breadth  further  in,  the  scroll 
magnificent ;  but  observe  the  haste — the 
deep  gauge-marks  on  the  side  of  the  scroll; 
here  is  already  an  indication  of  the  slov- 
enliness to  come  :  varnish  a  lovely  orange, 
wood  beautiful  :  two  cracks  in  the  belly, 
one  from  the  chin-mark  to  the  sound- 
hole.  94  is  a  violin  of  the  same  make, 
and  without  a  single  crack  ;  the  scroll  is 
not  quite  so  grandiose  as  93,  but  the  rest 
incomparable  ;  the  belly  pure  and  beauti- 
ful, the  back  a  picture.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  room  that  equals  in  picturesqueness 
the  colors  of  this  magnificent  piece  :  time 
and  fair  play  have  worn  it  thus ;  first, 
there  is  a  narrow  irregular  line  of  wear 
caused  by  the  hand  in  shifting,  next  tomes 
a  sheet  of  ruby  varnish,  with  no  wear  to 
speak  of  ;  then  an  irregular  piece  is  worn 
out  the  size  of  a  sixpence ;  then  more  var- 
nish ;  then,  from  the  center  downward, 
a  grand  wear,  the  size  and  shape  of  a 
large  curving  pear  ;  this  ends  in  a  broad 
zigzag  ribbon  of  varnish,  and  then  comes 
the  bare  woods  caused  b3r  the  friction  in 
playing,  but  higher  up  to  the  left  a  score 
of  great  bold  chips.  It  is  the  very  beau- 
ideal  of  the  red  Cremona  violin,  adorned, 
not  injured,  by  a  century's  fair  wear. 
No.  95  is  a  roughish  specimen  of  the 
same  epoch,  not  so  brilliant,  but  with 
its  own  charm.  Here  the  gauge-marks 
of  impatience  are  to  be  seen  in  the  very 
border,  and  I  should  have  expected  to  see 
the  stiff-throated  scroll,  for  it  belongs  to 
this  form. 

The  next  epoch  is  rougher  still,  and  is 
generally,  but  not  always,  higher  built, 
with  a  stiff-throated  scroll,  and  a  stiff, 
quaint  sound-hole  that  is  the  delig-ht  of 
connoisseurs ;  and  such  is  the  force  of 
genius  that  I  believe  in  our  secret  hearts 
we  love  these  impudent  fiddles  best — they 
are  so  full  of  chic.  After  that,  he  abuses 
the  patience  of  his  admirers ;  makes  his 


242 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


fiddles  of  a  preposterous  height,  with 
sound-holes  long  enough  for  a  tenor; 
but,  worst  of  all,  indifferent  wood  and 
downright  bad  varnish — varnish  worthy 
only  of  the  Guadagnini  tribe,  and  not 
laid  on  by  the  method  of  his  contempo- 
raries. Indeed.  I  sadly  fear  it  was  this 
great  man  who,  by  his  ill-example  in 
1740-45.  killed  the  varnish  of  Cremona. 
Thus — to  show 'the  range  of  the  subjecl  — 
out  of  five  distinct  epochs  in  the  work  of 
this  extraordinary  man  we  have  only  one 
and  a  half,  so  to  speak,  represented  even 
in  this  noble  collection— the  greatesl  by 
far  the  world  has  ever  seen:  inn  I  bope  to 
see  all  1  bese  gaps  filled,  and  also  to  -■ 
i  he  collect  ion  a  St  radiuarius  violin  of  that 
kind  I  call  t  lie  dolphin-backed.     This 

m;ii  ber  of  picturesque  wear.  When 
a  red  Stradiuarius  violin  is  made  of  soft 
velvet  wood,  ami  the  varnish  is  just  half 
worn  oil'  the  back  in  a  rough  triangular 
form,  i  hal  produces  a  certain  beauty  of 
lighl  and  shade  which  is  in  my  opinion 
the  ne  plus  ultra.  These  violins  are  rare. 
I  never  had  but  two  in  my  life.  Avery 
obliging  dealer,  who  knows  my  views, 
lias  promised  his  co-operation,  and  1 
think  England,  which  cuts  at  presenl 
rather  boo  pour  a  figure  in  respei 
this  maker,  will  add  a  dolphin-backed 
Stradiuarius  to  the  collection  before  il  is 
dispersed. 

Carlo  Bergonzi,  if  you  go  by  gauging 
and  purfling,  is  of  course  an  infi 
make  to  the  Amati ;  but,  if  thai 
he  the  line  of  reasoning,  he  is  superior  to 
Joseph  Guarnerius.  We  oughl  to  be  in 
one  story:  if  Joseph  Guarnerius  is  the 
second  maker  of  Cremona,  it  follows  thai 
Carlo  Bergonzi  is  the  third.  Fine  size, 
reasonable  outline,  flat  and  even  model. 
good  wood.  work,  and  varnish,  and  an 
indescribable  air  of  grandeur  and  impor- 
tance. He  is  quite  as  rare  as  Joseph 
Guarnerius.  Twenty-five  years  ago  I 
ransacked  Europe  for  him — for  he  is  a 
maker  I  always  loved — and  I  could  ob- 
tain but  few.  No.  109  was  one  of  them, 
and  the  most  remarkable,  take  it  alto- 
gether. In  this  one  case  he  has  really 
set  himself  to  copy  Stradiuarius.  He  has 
composed  his  purfling  in  the   same  pro- 


portions, which  was  not  at  all  his  habit. 
He  has  copied  the  sound-hole  closely,  and 
has  even  imitated  that  great  man's  freak 
of  delicately  hollowing  out  the  lower 
wood-work  of  the  sound-hole.  The  var- 
nish of  this  violin  is  as  fine  in  color  as 
any  pale  Stradiuarius  in  the  world,  and 
far  superior  in  body  to  most  of  them; 
hut  thai  is  merely  owing  to  its  rare  pres- 
ervation. Most  of  these  pale  Stradiuar- 
inses.  and  especially  Mrs.  Jay's  and  No. 
86,  had  once  varnish  on  them  as  beautiful 

won  this  chef-d'oeuvre  of  Carlo 
onzi. 
Monsieur  1-Vtis  having  described  Mich- 
ael Angelo   Bergonzi  as  a  pupil  of  Stradi. 
English  writers  having  blind- 
ly follow  ed    him,  t  Lis  seems  a  tit   place  I  o 
correcl  t  hat  error.     Michael  Angelo  Her- 
gonzi   was  the  son   of  Carlo:    began    to 
work  after  i  he  deal  h  of  St  radiuarius,  and 
inula  led  nobody  but   his  father — ami  him 
vilelj .     I  hs  corners  are  not  corners,  hut 
peaks.     See  them   once,  you  never  forget 

bu1  you  pray  Heaven  you  may 
never  see  them  again.  His  ticket  runs, 
■•Michel  Angelo  Bergonzi  I'm  No  di  Carlo, 
fece  nel  Cremona,"  from  1750  to  1780. 
Of  Nicholas,  son  of  .Michael  Angelo,  I 
have  a  ticket  hated  1796,  bu1  be  doubtless 
began  before  that  and  worked  iilll830. 
He  lived  till  1838,  was  well  known  to 
Tarisio,  and  ii  is  from  him  alone  we  have 
learned  the  house  Stradiuarius  lived  in. 
There  is  a  tenor  by  Michael  Angelo  Ber- 
gonzi to  be  seen  at  Mr.  Cox,  the  picture 
dealer.  Pall  Mall,  and  one  by  Nicholas,  in 
Mr.  Chanot's  shop,  in   Wardour  Street. 

Neither  of  these  Bergonzi  knew  how  their 
own  progenitor  varnished  any  more  than 
my  housemaid  does. 

Stainer.  a  mixed  maker.  He  went  to 
Cremona  too  late  to  unlearn  his  German 
style,  hut  he  moderated  it.  and  does  not 
scoop  so  badly  as  his  successors.  The 
model  of  his  tenor,  especially  the  back, 
is  very  fine.  The  peculiar  defect  of  it  is 
that  it  is  purfled  too  near  the  border, 
which  always  gives  meanness.  This  is 
the  more  unfortunate,  that  really  he  was 
freer  from  this  defect  than  his  imitators. 
He  learned  to  varnish  in  Cremona,  but 
his  varnish   is  generally  paler  than   the 


READIAXA. 


243 


native  Cremonese.  This  tenor  is  excep- 
tional :  it  has  a  rose-colored  varnish  that 
nothing  can  surpass.     It  is  lovely. 

Sanctus  Seraphin.— This  is  a  true 
Venetian  maker.  The  Venetian  horn 
was  always  half-Cremonese,  half-Ger- 
man. In  this  bass,  which  is  his  uniform 
style,  you  see  a  complete  mastery  of  the 
knife  and  the  gauge.  Neither  the  Stradi- 
uarius  nor  the  Amati  ever  purfled  a  bass 
more  finely,  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  rarely 
so  finely.  But  oh  !  the  miserable  scroll, 
the  abominable  sound-hole  !  Here  he 
shows  the  cloven  foot,  and  is  more 
German  than  Stainer.  Uniformity  was 
never  carried  so  far  as  \>y  this  natty 
workman ;  one  violin  exactly  like  the 
next ;  one  bass  the  image  of  its  prede- 
cessor. His  varnish  never  varies.  It  is 
always  slightly  opaque.  This  is  observed 
in  his  violins,  but  it  escapes  detection  in 
his  basses,  because  it  is  but  slight,  after 
all.  and  the  wonderful  wood  he  put  into 
his  basses,  shines  through  that  slight 
defect  and  hides  it  from  all  but  practiced 
eyes.  He  had  purchased  a  tree  or  a  very 
large  log  of  it ;  for  this  is  the  third  bass 
I  have  seen  of  this  wonderful  wood. 
Nowadays  you  might  cut  down  a  forest 
of  sycamore  and  not  match  it ;  those  vet- 
eran trees  are  all  gone.  He  has  a  feat- 
ure all  to  himself ;  his  violins  have  his 
initials  in  ebony  let  into  the  belly  under 
the  broad  part  of  the  tail-piece.  This 
natty  Venetian  is  the  only  old  violin 
maker  I  know  who  could  write  well. 
The  others  bungle  that  part  of  the  date 
they  are  obliged  to  write  in  the  tickets. 
This  one  writes  it  in  a  hand  like  copper- 
plate, whence  I  suspect  he  was  himself 
the  engraver  of  his  ticket,  which  is 
unique.  It  is  four  times  the  size  of  a 
Cremonese  ticket,  and  has  a  scroll  bor- 
der composed  thus : — The  sides  of  a  par- 
allelogram are  created  by  four  solid 
lines  like  the  sound-holes ;  these  are 
united  at  the  sides  by  two  leaves  and  at 
the  center  by  two  shells.  Another  ser- 
pentine line  is  then  coiled  round  them  at 
short  intervals,  and  within  the  parallelo- 
gram  the  ticket  is  printed  : 

Sanctus  Seraphin  Utinensis, 
Fecit  Venetis,  anno  17 — . 


The  Mighty  Venetian. — I  come  now 
to  a  truly  remarkable  piece,  a  basso  di 
camera  that  comes  modestly  into  the 
room  without  a  name,  yet  there  is  noth- 
ing' except  No.  91  that  sends  such  a  thrill 
through  the  true  connoisseur.  The  out- 
line is  grotesque  but  original,  the  model 
full  and  swelling  but  not  bumpy,  the 
wood  detestable  ;  the  back  is  hare-wood, 
but  without  a  vestige  of  figure  ;  so  it- 
might  just  as  well  be  elm  :  the  belly,  in- 
stead of  being  made  of  mountain  deal 
grown  on  the  sunny  side  of  the  Alps,  is 
a  piece  of  house  timber.  Now  these  ma- 
terials would  kill  any  other  maker  ;  yet 
this  mighty  bass  stands  its  ground.  Ob- 
serve the  fiber  of  the  belly ;  here  is  the 
deepest  red  varnish  in  the  room,  and  laid 
on  with  an  enormous  brush.  Can  you 
see  the  fiber  through  the  thin  varnish  of 
Sanctus  Seraphin  as  plainly  as  you  can 
see  the  fiber  through  this  varnish  laid  on 
as  thick  as  paint  ?  So  much  for  clear- 
ness. Now  for  color.  Let  the  student 
stand  before  this  bass,  get  the  varnish  in 
his  mind,  and  then  walk  rapidly  to  any 
other  instrument  in  the  room  he  has 
previously  determined  to  compare  with 
it.  This  will  be  a  revelation  to  him  if  he 
has  eyes  in  his  head. 

And  this  miracle  comes  in  without  a 
name.  and.  therefore,  is  passed  over  by  all 
the  sham  judges.  And  why  does  it  come 
without  a  name?  I  hear  a  French  dealer 
advised  those  who  framed  the  catalogue. 
But  the  fact  is  that  if  a  man  once  nar- 
rows his  mind  to  three  or  four  makers, 
and  imagines  they  monopolize  excellence, 
he  never  can  be  a  judge  of  old  instru- 
ments, the  study  is  so  wide  and  his  mind 
artificially  narrowed.  Example  of  this 
false  method:  Mr.  Faulconer  sends  in  a 
bass,  which  he  calls  Andreas  Guarnerius. 
An  adviser  does  not  see  that,  and  sug- 
gests "  probably  by  Amati."  Now  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  ''probably  by  Am- 
ati." any  more  than  there  is  probably 
the  sun  or  the  moon.  That  bass  is  by 
David  Tecchler,  of  Rome ;  but  it  is  a 
masterpiece;  and  so,  because  he  has 
done  better  than  usual,  the  poor  devil  is 
to  be  robbed  of  his  credit,  and  it  is  to  be 
given,  first  to  one  maker  tvho  is  in  tin- 


244 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


ring  and  then  to  another,  ivho  is  in  the 
ring.  The  basso  di  camera,  which,  not 
being  in  the  ring,  comes  without  a  name, 
is  by  Domenico  Montagnana  of  Venice, 
the  greatest  maker  of  basses  in  all  Ven- 
ice or  Cremona  except  one.  If  this  bass 
had  only  a  decent  piece  of  wood  at  the 
back,  it  would  extinguish  all  the  other 
basses.  But  we  can  remedy  that  defect. 
Basses  by  this  maker  exist  with  fine 
wood.  Mr.  Hart,  senior,  sold  one  some 
twenty  years  ago  with  yellow  varnish, 
and  wood  striped  like  a  tiger's  back. 
Should  these  lines  meet  the  eye  of  the 
purchaser,  1  shall  feel  grateful  if  ho  will 
communicate  with  me  thereupon. 

1  come  now  to  the  last  of  1  lie  (lot  lis. 
thus  catalogued.  No.  100,  "ascribed  to 
Guarnerius.     Probablj    bi    Storioni." 

Lorenzo  Storioni  is  a  maker  who  began 
to  work  at  Cremona  aboul  1780.  He  l.as 
a  good  model  bid  wretched  spiril  varnish. 
Violin  No.  ii|n  is  si  met  inn--  much  better. 
li  is  a  violin  mad-'  lief,, re  i  760  by  Lan- 
dolfo  "i  Milan.  He  is  a  maker  well  know  n 
to  experienced  d<  alers  who  can  take  t  heir 
minds  oul  of  bhe  ring,  but,  as  the  writers 
seem  a  li1 1  le  confused,  and  talk  of  t  wo 
L  uidulpb  -.  :.  I  iharles  and  a  Ferdinand.  1 
maj  as  well  say  here  thai  the  two  are 
one.     This  is  the  true  tickel  : — 

Carolus  Ferdinandus  Landulphus, 
Mediolani    in    \  ia    S.   Mar- 
garitas, anno  I  i  56. 

Stiff  inner  bought  really  something  like 
Joseph  Guarnerius ;  but  all  the  resl  quite 

unlike:  scroll   very   mean,   varnisl 

and  sometimes   very  fine.     Mr.  Moore's, 

in  point  of  varnish,  is  a  fine  specimen.  It 
has  a  deeper,  nobler  tint  than  usual.  This 
maker  is  very  interesting,  on  account  of 
his  being  absolutely  the  last  Italian  who 
tised  the  glorious  varnish  of  Cremona.  It 
died  first  at  Cremona  ;  lingered  a  year  or 
two  more  at  Venice  ;  Landolfo  retained  it 
at  Milan  till  L760,  and  with  him  it  ended. 
In  my  next  and  last  article  I  will  deal 
with  the  varnish  of  Cremona,  as  illus- 
trated by  No.  91  and  other  specimens, 
and  will  enable  the  curious  to  revive  that 
lost  art  if  thev  choose. 


FOURTH  LETTER. 

August  3\st.  1ST:.'. 

The  fiddles  of  Cremona  gained  their 
reputation  by  superior  tone,  but  they 
hold  it  now  mainly  by  their  beauty.  For 
thirty  years  past  violins  have  been  made 
equal  in  model  to  the  chef-d'ceuvres  of 
Cremona,  and  stronger  in  wood  than 
Stradiua litis,  and  more  scientific  than 
Guarnerius  in  the  thicknesses.  This  class 
of  violin  is  hideous,  but  has  one  quality  in 
perfection  —  Power;   while   the   master- 

of  Cremona  eelipse  every  new 
violin  in  sweetness,  oiliness.  crispness, 
and  volu of  tone  as  distincl  from  loud- 
ness. Age  has  dried  their  vegetable 
juices,  making  the  carcass  much  lighter 
than  that  of  a  new  violin,  ami  those  light 
ory  frames  vibrate  at  a  touch. 

Bui  M.  Fetis  goes  too  Ear  when  he  inti- 
mates that  Stradiuarius  is  louder  as  well 
as  sweeter  than  Lupot,  Gand,  or  Bernar- 
del.  Take  a  hundred  violins  by  Stradi- 
uarius and  open  them;  you  find  about 
ninety-five  patched  in  the  center  with 
new    wood.      The    connecting    link    is   a 

i    glue.      And    is  glue  a    line   reso- 

n:i iii  substance?  And  are  the  glue  and 
the  new  wood  of  John  J'-uil  and  Jean 
Crapaud  transmogrified  into  the  wood  of 
Stradiuarius  by  merely  sticking  on  to  it  ? 
Is  it  not  extravagant  to  quote  patched 
violins  as  beyond  rivalry  in  all  the  quali- 
ties of  sound?  How  can  they  he  the 
when  the  center  of  the  sound- 
board is  a  men'  sandwich,  composed  of 
the  maker's  thin  wood,  a  buttering  of 
glue,  and  a  huge  slice  of  new  wood  ? 

Joseph  Guarnerius  litis  plenty  of  wood  : 
but  his  thicknesses  are  not  always  so 
scientific  as  those  of  the  best  modern 
fiddlemakers :  so  that  even  he  can  be 
rivaled  m  power  by  a  new  violin,  though 
not  in  richness  and  sweetness.  Consider, 
then,  these  two  concurrent  phenomena, 
that  for  twenty-five  years  new  violins 
have  been  better  made  for  sound  than 
they  ever  were  made  in  this  world,  yet 
old  Cremona  violins  have  nearly  doubled 
in  price,  and.  you  will  divine,  as  the  truth 
is.  that  old  fiddles  are  not  bought  by  the 


BEADIANA. 


245 


ear  alone.  I  will  add  that  100  years  ago, 
when  the  violins  of  Brescia  and  of  Stradi- 
uarius and  Gruarnerius  were  the  only  well- 
modeled  violins,  they  were  really  bought 
by  the  ear,  and  the  prices  were  moderate. 
Now  they  are  in  reality  bought  by  the 
eye.  and  the  price  is  enormous.  The  rea- 
son is  that  their  tone  is  good  but  their  ap- 
pearance inimitable  ;  because  the  makers 
chose  fine  wood  and  laid  on  a  varnish 
highly  colored,  yet  clear  as  crystal,  with 
this  strange  property  —  it  becomes  far 
more  beautiful  by  time  and  usage  :  it 
wears  softly  away,  or  chips  boldly  away, 
m  such  forms  as  to  make  the  whole  violin 
picturesque,  beautiful,  various  and  curi- 
ous. 

To  approach  the  same  conclusion  by  a 
different  road — No.'  94  is  a  violin  whose 
picturesque  beauty  I  have  described  al- 
ready ;  twenty-five  years  ago  Mr.  Plow- 
den  gave  £450  for  it.  It  is  now,  I  sup- 
pose, worth  £500.  Well,  knock  that  violin 
down  and  crack  it  in  two  places,  it  will 
sink  that  moment  to  the  value  of  the 
••  violon  du  diable,"  and  be  worth  £350. 
But  collect  twenty  amateurs  all  ready  to 
buy  it,  and,  instead  of  cracking  it,  dip  it 
into  a  jar  of  spirits  and  wash  the  var- 
nish olf.  Not  one  of  those  customers  will 
give  you  above  £40  for  it;  nor  would  it 
in  reality  be  worth  quite  so  much  in  the 
market.  Take  another  example.  There 
is  a  beautiful  and  very  perfect  violin  by 
Stradiuarius,  which  the  Times,  in  an  ar- 
ticle on  these  instruments,  calls  La 
Messie.  These  leading  journals  have 
private  information  on  every  subject, 
even  grammar.  I  prefer  to  call  it — after 
the  veiw  intelligent  man  to  whom  we  owe 
the  sight  of  it — the  Vuillaume  Stradiua- 
rius. Well,  the  Vuillaume  Stradiuarius  is 
worth,  as  times  go,  £600  at  least.  Wash 
off  the  varnish,  it  would  be  worth  £35  ; 
because,  unlike  No.  94,  it  has  one  little 
crack.  As  a  further  illustration  that 
violins  are  heard  by  the  eye,  let  me  re- 
mind your  readers  of  the  high  prices  at 
which  numberless  copies  of  the  old  makers 
were  sold  in  Paris  for  many  years.  The 
inventors  of  this  art  undertook  to  deliver 
a  new  violin,  that  in  usage  and  color  of 
the  worn  parts  should  be  exactly  like  an 


old  and  worn  violin  of  some  favorite 
maker.  Now,  to  do  this  with  white  wood 
was  impossible ;  so  the  wood  was  baked 
in  the  oven  or  colored  yellow  with  the 
smoke  of  sulphuric  acid,  or  so  forth,  to 
give  it  the  color  of  age;  but  these  proc- 
esses kill  the  wood  as  a  vehicle  of  sound  ; 
and  these  copies  were,  and  are,  the  worst 
musical  instruments  Europe  has  created 
in  this  century  ;  and,  bad  as  they  are  at 
starting,  they  get  worse  every  year  of 
their  untuneful  existence ;  yet,  because 
they  flattered  the  eye  with  something 
like  the  light  and  shade  and  pictur- 
esqueness  of  the  Cremona  violin,  these 
pseudo-antiques,  thoug-h  illimitable  in 
number,  sold  like  wildfire ;  and  hun- 
dreds of  self-deceivers  heard  them 
by  the  eye,  and  fancied  these  tinpots 
sounded  divinely.  The  hideous  red 
violins,  of  Bernardel-Gand,  and  an  En- 
glish maker  or  two,  are  a  reaction  against 
those  copies ;  they  are  made  honestly 
with  white  wood,  and  they  will,  at  all 
events,  improve  in  sound  every  year  and 
every  decade.  It  conies  to  this,  then, 
that  the  varnish  of  Cremona,  as  operated 
on  by  time  and  usage,  has  an  inimitable 
beauty,  and  we  pay  a  high  price  for  it  in 
second-class  makers,  and  an  enormous 
price  in  a  fine  Stradiuarius  or  Joseph 
Guarnerius.  No  wonder,  then,  that 
many  violin-makers  have  tried  hard  to 
discover  the  secret  of  this  varnish  ;  many 
chemists  have  given  days  and  nights  of 
anxious  study  to  it.  More  than  once, 
even  in  my  time,  hopes  have  run  high, 
but  only  to  fall  again.  Some  have  even 
cried  Eureka  !  to  the  public  :  but  the  mo- 
ment others  looked  at  their  discovery  and 
compared  it  with  the  real  thing,  "inex- 
tinguishable laughter  shook  the  skies." 
At  last  despair  has  succeeded  to  all  that 
energetic  study,  and  the  varnish  of  Cre- 
mona is  sullenly  given  up  as  a  lost  art. 
I  have  heard  and  read  a  great  deal 
about  it.  and  I  think  I  can  state  the 
principal  theories  briefly,  but  intelli- 
gibly. 

1 .  It  used  to  be  stoutly  maintained  that 
the  basis  was  amber;  that  these  old 
Italians  had  the   art  of  infusing-  amber 


246 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


without  impairing  its  transparency  ;  once 
fused,  by  dry  heat,  it  could  be  boiled  into 
a  varnish  with  oil  and  spirit  of  turpentine 
and  combined  with  transparent  yet  last- 
ing colors.  To  convince  me,  they  used  to 
rub  the  worn  part  of  a  Cremona  with  their 
sleeves,  and  then  put  the  fiddle  to  their 
noses,  and  smell  amber.  Then  I.  burning 
with  love  of  knowledge,  used  to  rub  the 
fiddle  very  hard  and  whip  it  to  my  nose. 
and  not  smell  amber.  Bu1  that  might 
arise  in  some  measure  from  there  not 
being  any  amber  there  to  smell.  (N.  B. — 
These  amber-seeking  worthies  never  rub- 
bed tin'  colored  varnish  on  an  old  violin. 
Yet    their     theory    had     placed     amber 

'  hri,'.  | 

\!.  That,  time  does  it  all.  Tin'  violins 
of  St  radiuarius  were  raw,  crude  i  bings  at 
starting,  and  the  varnish  rather  opaque. 

3.  Two  or  three  had  the  courage  to 
say  ii  «as  spirit  varnish,  ami  alleged  in 
proof  that  if  you  drop  a  drop  of  alcohol 
on  a  Stradiuarius,  it  '.cars  the  varnish 
off  as    il    runs. 

■1.   The  far  more  prevalent    notion   was 

I  is   an  oil    varnish,   in  support    of 

which  they  pointed   to  the  rich  appear- 

n  hat  1  hey  call  the  bare  wood,  and 
contrasted  the  miserable  hungry  appear- 
ance of  the  wood  in  all  old  violins  known 
to  be  spirit  varnished  —  for  instance, 
Nicholas  Gagliano,  of  Naples,  and  .lean 
Baptiste  Guadagnini,  of  Piacenza,  Ital- 
ian makers  contemporary  with  Joseph 
Guarnerias. 

5.  That  the  sccrd  has  been  lost  by 
adulteration.  The  old  Cremonese  and 
Venetians  got  pure  and  sovereign  gums. 
that  have  retired  from  commerce 

Xow.as  totheory  N».  I. — Surely  amber 
is  too  dear  a  gum  and  too  impracticable 
for  two  hundred  fiddle-makers  to  have 
used  in  Italy.  Till  fused  by  dry  heat  it 
is  no  more  soluble  in  varnish  than  quartz 
is:  and  who  can  fuse  it?  Copal  is  in- 
clined to  melt,  but  amber  to  burn,  to 
catch  fire,  to  do  anything  but  melt. 
Put  the  two  gums  to  a  lighted  candle. 
you  will  then  appreciate  the  difference. 
I  tried  more  than  one  chemist  in  the  fus- 
ing of  amber  ;  it  came  out  of  their  hands 


a  dark  brown  opaque  substance,  rather 
burned  than  fused.  When  really  fused  it 
is  a  dark  olive  green,  as  clear  as  crystal. 
Yet  I  never  knew  but  one  man  who  could 
bring  it  to  this,  and  he  had  special  ma- 
chinery, invented  by  himself,  for  it  ;  in 
spite  of  which  he  nearly  burned  down  his 
house  at  it  one  day.  I  believe  the  whole 
amber  theory  comes  out  of  a  verbal 
equivoque;  the  varnish  of  the  Amati 
led  amber  to  mark  its  rich  color, 
and  your  a  priori  reasoners  went  oil'  on 

that,  forgetting  that  amber  must  be  an 
inch  thick  to  exhibit  the  color  of  amber. 
By  such  reasoning  as  this  Mr.  Davidson, 
in  a  book  of  iM'eat  general  merit,  is  mis- 
led so  far  as  to  put  down  powdered  glass 
for  an  ingredient  m  Cremona  varnish. 
Mark  the  logic.  Glass  in  a  sheet  is  trans- 
parent :  so  if  you  reduce  it,  to  powder  it 
will  add  transparancj  to  varnish.  Im- 
posed on  by  this  chimera,  he  actually  puts 
powdered  "lass,  an  opaque  and  insoluble 
sediment,  into  tour  receipts  for  Cremona 
varnish. 

Bui    the    th  :.  4.   "i   have  all  a 

gfood  oeal  of  irui  li  m  them;  their  fault  is 
that  they  are  too  narrow,  and  too  blind 
to  the  truth  of  each  other.     In  this,  as 

.V    SCIENTIFIC   INQUIRY,  THE  TRUE 
SOLUTION  is  THAT  WHICH  RECONCILES  ALL 
THE  TRUTHS  THAT   SEEM  AT  VARIANCE. 
The   way   to  discover   a    losl    art.    once 

d  with  variations  by  a  hundred 
people,  is  to  examine  very  closely  the 
mosl  brilliant  specimen,  the  most  charac- 
teristic specimen,  and.  indeed,  the  most 
extravagant  specimen — if  you  can  find 
one.  1  took  thai  way,  and  I  found  in 
the  chippiest  varnish  of  Stradiuarius, 
viz.,  his  dark  red  varnish,  the  key  to  all 
the  varnish  of  Cremona,  red  or  yellow. 
(N.B. — Tiie  yellow  always  beat  me  dead, 
till  I  got  to  it  by  this  detour.)  There  is 
no  specimen  in  the  collection  of  this  red 
varnish  so  violent  as  I  have  seen  ;  but 
Mr.  Pawle'sbass.  No.  187,  will  do.  Please 
walk  with  me  up  to  t  he  back  of  that  bass, 
and  let  us  disregard  all  hypotheses  and 
theories,  and  use  our  eyes.  What  do  we 
see  before  us  ?  A  bass  with  a  red  varnish 
that  chips  very  readily  off  what  people 
call  the  bare  wood.    But  nevermind  what 


READIAXA. 


•247 


these  echoes  of  echoes  call  it.  What  is 
it?  It  is  not  bare  wood.  Bare  wood 
turns  a  dirty  brown  with  age.  This  is 
a  rich  and  lovely  yellow.  By  its  color 
and  its  glassy  gloss,  and  by  disbelieving 
what  echoes  say  and  trusting  only  to  our 
e3res,  we  may  see  at  a  glance  it  is  not 
bare  wood.,  but  highly  varnished  wood. 
This  varnish  is  evidently  oil.  and  contains 
a  gum.  Allowing  for  the  tendency  of  oil 
to  run  into  the  wood,  I  should  Ray  four 
coats  of  oil  varnish  :  and  this  they  call 
the  bare  wood.  We  have  now  discovered 
the  first  process  :  a  clear  oil  varnish  laid 
on  the  white  wood  with  some  transparent 
gum  not  high  colored.  Now  proceed  a. 
step  further  ;  the  red  and  chippy  varnish, 
what  is  that?  "Oh,  that  is  a  varnish 
of  the  same  quality  but  another  color," 
say  the  theorists  No.  4.  "  How  do  you 
know?"  says  I.  "It  is  self-evident. 
Would  a  man  begin  with  oil  varnish  and 
then  go  into  spirit  varnish?"  is  their 
reply.  Now  observe,  this  is  not  humble 
observation,  it  is  only  rational  preconcep- 
tion. But  if  discovery  has  an  enemy  in 
the  human  mind,  that  enemy  is  precon- 
ception. Let  us  then  trust  only  to  hum- 
ble observation.  Here  is  a  clear  varnish 
without  the  ghost  of  a  chip  in  its  nature; 
and  upon  it  is  a  red  varnish  that  is  all 
chip.  Does  that  look  as  if  the  two  var- 
nishes were  homogeneous  ?  Is  chip  pre- 
cisely the  same  thing  as  no  chip?  If 
homogeneous,  there  would  be  chemical 
affinity  between  the  two.  But  this  ex- 
treme readiness  of  the  red  varnish  to 
chip  away  from  the  clear  marks  a  defect 
of  chemical  affinity  between  the  two. 
Why,  if  you  were  to  put  your  thumb- 
nail against  that  red  varnish,  a  little 
piece  would  come  away  directly.  This 
is  not  so  in  any  known  case  of  oil  upon 
oil.  Take  old  Forster,  for  instance ;  he 
begins  with  clear  oil  varnish ;  then  on 
that  he  puts  a  distinct  oil  varnish  with 
the  color  and  transparancy  of  pea-soup. 
You  will  not  get  his  pea-soup  to  chip  off 
liis  clear  varnish  in  a  hurry.  There  is  a 
bass  by  William  Forster  in  the  collection 
a  hundred  years  old  ;  but  the  wear  is  con- 
fined to  the  places  where  the  top  varnish 
must  go  in  a    played  bass.     Everywhere 


else  his  pea-soup  sticks  tight  to  his  clear 
varnish,  being  oil  upon  oil. 

Now,  take  a  perfectly  distinct  line  of  ob- 
servation. In  varnishes  oil  is  a  diluent  of 
color.  It  is  not  in  the  power  of  man  to 
charge  an  oil  varnish  with  color  so  highly 
as  the  top  varnish  of  Mr.  Pawle's  bass  is 
charged.  And  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  clear  varnish  below  has  filled 
all  the  pores  of  the  wood  ;  therefore  the 
diluent  cannot  escape  into  the  wood,  and 
so  leave  the  color  undiluted  ;  if  that  red 
varnish  was  ever  oil  varnish,  every  par- 
ticle of  the  oil  must  be  there  still.  What. 
in  that  mere  film  so  crammed  with  color? 
Never  !  Nor  yet  in  the  top  varnish  of 
the  Spanish  bass,  which  is  thinner  still, 
yet  more  charged  with  color  than'  any 
topaz  of  twice  the  thickness.  This.  then. 
is  how  Antonius  Stradiuarius  varnished 
Mr.  Pawle*s  bass. — He  began  with  three 
or  four  coats  of  oil  varnish  containing 
some  common  gum.  He  then  laid  on 
several  coats  of  red  varnish,  made  by 
simply  dissolving  some  fine  red  unadulter- 
ated gum  in  spirit;  the  spirit  evaporated 
and  left  pure  gum  lying  on  a  rich  oil  var- 
nish, from  which  it  chips  by  its  dry  nature 
and  its'  utter  want  of  chemical  affinity  to 
the  substratum.  On  the  Spanish  bass 
Stradiuarius  put  not  more,  I  think,  than 
two  coats  of  oil  varnish,  and  then  a  spirit 
varnish  consisting  of  a  different  gum.  less 
chippy,  but  even  more  tender  and  wear- 
able than  the  red.  Now  take  this  key  all 
round  the  room,  and  you  will  find  there  is 
not  a  lock  it  will  not  open.  Look  at  the 
varnish  on  the  back  of  the  "  violon  dti 
diable."  as  it  is  called.  There  is  a  top 
varnish  with  all  tire  fire  of  a  topaz  and 
far  more  color :  for  slice  the  deepest 
topaz  to  that  thinness,  it  would  pale  he- 
fore  that  varnish.  And  why?  1st.  Be- 
cause this  is  no  oily  dilution  ;  it  is  a  divine 
unadulterated  gum,  left  there  undiluted 
by  evaporation  of  the  spirituous  vehicle. 
2d.  Because  this  varnish  is  a  jewel  with 
the  advantage  of  a  foil  behind  it  :  that 
foil  is  the  fine  oil  varnish  underneath. 
The  purest  specimen  of  Stradiuarius 's  red 
varnish  in  the  room  is,  perhaps,  Mr. 
Fountaine*s  kit.  Look  at  the  back  of  it 
by  the    light    of   these  remarks.     What 


■us 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES   READE. 


can  be  plainer  than  the  clear  oil  varnish 
with  not  the  ghost  of  a  chip  in  it,  and  the 
glossy  top  varnish,  so  charged  with 
color,  and  so  ready  to  chip  from  the 
varnish  below,  for  want  of  chemical  affin- 
ity between  the  varnishes?  The  basso  di 
camera  by  Montagnana  is  the  same  tliin^'. 
See  the  bold  wear  on  the  back  revealing 
Mil'  heterogeneous  varnish  below  tin'  ivii. 
They  are  all  the  same  tiling.  The  palest 
violins  of  Stradiuarius  and  Amati  are 
much  older  and  harder  worn  than  Mr. 
Pawle's  bass,  and  the  top  varnish  nut  of 
a  chippy  character:  yel  look  at  them 
closely  by  the  lighl  of  these  remarks,  and 
you  shall  lind  one  of  two  phenomena — 
either  the  tender  top  varnish  has  all  been 
worn  away,  and  so  there  is  nothing  to  be 
inferred  one  way  or  other,  or  else  there 
are  flakes  of  it  left  ;  and.  if  so.  these 
however  thin,  shall  always  betray, 
bj  the  superior  vividness  of  their  color 
to  the  color  of  the  subjacent  oil  varnish. 
bhal  they  are  not  oil  varnish,  but  pure 
gum  left  there  by  evaporating  spirit  on  a 
foil  of  beautiful  old  oil  varnish.  Take 
Mrs.  Jay's  A.matise  Stradiuarius:  on  the 
back  of  that  violin  toward  the  top  there 
is  a  mere  flake  of  top  varnish  left  by  it- 
self: all  round  it  is  nothing  left  but  the 
bottom  varnish.  That  fragment  of  top 
varnish  is  a  film  thinner  than  gold  Leaf; 
>  k  at  its  intensity  :  it  lies  on  t  be 
fine  old  oil  varnish  like  fixed  lightning,  il 
is  so  vivid.  It  is  just  as  distinct  from  the 
oil  varnish  as  is  the  red  varnish  of  the 
kit.  Examine  the  Duke  of  Cambridge's 
violin  or  any  other  Cremona  instrument 
in  the  whole  world  you  like  ;  it  is  always 
the  same  thing,  though  not  so  self-evident 
as  in  the  red  and  chippy  varnishes.  The 
Vuillaume  Stradiuarius.  not  being  worn, 
does  not  assist  us  in  this  particular  line  of 
argument ;  but  it  does  not  contradict  us. 
Indeed,  there  are  a  few  little  chips  in  the 
top  varnish  of  the  back,  and  they  reveal 
a  heterogeneous  varnish  below,  with  its 
rich  yellow  color  like  the  bottom  varnish 
of  the  Pawle  bass.  Moreover,  if  you  look 
at  the  top  varnish  closely  you  shall  see 
what  you  never  see  in  a  new  violin  of  our 
day  :  not  a  vulgar  glare  upon  the  surface, 
bui    a  gentle  inward  lire.     Now  that  in- 


ward fire,  I  assure  you,  is  mainly  caused 
by  the  oil  varnish  below  ;  the  orange 
varnish  above  has  a  heterogeneous  foil 
below.  That  inward  glow  is  character- 
istic of  all  foils.  If  you  could  see  the 
Vuillaume  Stradiuarius  at  night  and 
move  it  about  in  the  light  of  a  candle, 
you  would  be  amazed  at  the  fire  of  the 
foil  and  the  refraction  of  light. 

Thus,  then,  it  is.  The  unlucky  phrase 
■•varnish  of  Cremona"  has  weakened 
men's  powers  of  observation  by  fixing  a 
preconceived  notion  thai  the  varnish 
must   be  all  one  thing.      The  LOST  SECRET 

is  this.     rni'.  Cremona  varnish  is  not 

A  VARNISH,  BUT  TWO  VARNISHES:  AM) 
THOSE  VARNISHES  ALWAYS  HETEROGENE- 
OUS:  I  HAT  IS  TO  SAY,  FIRST  THE  PORES 
OF  THE  WOOD  ARE  PILLED  AXD  THE  GRAIN 
SHOWN  I'P  BY  ONE.  BY  TWO,  BY  THREE. 
AND  SOMETIMES,  THOUGH  BARELY,  I'.'i 
I'H  B  (HATS  OK  FINE  oil,  VARNISH  WITH 
SOME    COMMON    BUT  CLEAR   GUM    IN   sul.r- 

tion.    Then    upon    this    oil    varnish, 

WHEN  DRY,  is  LAID  a  HETEROGENEOUS 
VARNISH;  VIZ.,  A  SOLUTION  in  BPIRIT  OF 
-•  1MB  SO^  EREIGN,  HIGH  <  OLORED,  PEL- 
LUCID,    AND,     ABOVE    ALL.    TENDER    GUM. 

Gum-lac,  which  for  forty  years  has  been 
the  mainstay  of  violin-makers,  must 
never  be  used  :  no!  one  atom  of  it.  That 
vile,  flinty  gum  killed  varnish  at  Naples 
and  Piacenza  a  hundred  and  forty  years 
ago,  as  it  kills  varnish  now.  Old  Cre- 
mona shunned  it .  and  whoever  employs  a 
Traill  of  it.  commits  willful  suicide  as  a 
Cremonese  varnisher.  It  will  not  wear; 
it  will  not  chip  ;  it  is  in  every  respect  the 
opposite  of  the  Cremona  gums.  Avoid  it 
utterly,  or  fail  hopelessly,  as  all  varnish- 
ers  have  failed  since  that  fatal  gum  came 
in.  The  deep  red  varnish  of  Cremona  is 
pure  dragon's  blood;  not  the  cake,  the 
stick,  the  filthy  trash,  which,  in  this  sin- 
ful and  adulterating  generation,  is  re- 
tailed under  that  name,  but  the  tear  of 
dragon's  blood,  little  lumps  deeper  in 
color  than  a  carbuncle,  clear  as  crystal, 
and  fiery  as  a  ruby.  Unadulterated 
dragon"s  blood  does  not  exist  in  commerce 
west  of  Temple  Bar  :  but  you  can  get  it 
by  groping  in  the  City  as  hard  as  Diog- 
enes had  to  grope   for  an  honest  man  in 


EEADIAXA. 


249 


a  much  less  knavish  town  than  London. 
The  yellow  varnish  is  the  unadulterated 
tear  of  another  gum,  retailed  in  a  cake 
like  dragon's  blood,  and  as  great  a  fraud. 
All  cakes  and  sticks  presented  to  you  in 
commerce  as  g'unis  are  audacious  swin- 
dles. A  true  gum  is  the  tear  of  a  tree. 
For  the  yellow  tear,  as  for  the  red,  grope 
the  City  harder  than  Diogenes.  The 
orange  varnish  of  Peter  Guarnerius  and 
Stradiuarius  is  only  a  mixture  of  these 
two  g-enuine  gums.  Even  the  milder 
reds  of  Stradiuarius  are  slightly  reduced 
with  the  yellow  gum.  The  Montagnana 
bass  and  No.  94  are  pure  dragon's  blood 
mellowed  down  by  time  and  exposure 
only. 

A  violin  varnished  as  I  have  indicated 
will  look  a  little  better  than  other  new 
violins  from  the  first ;  the  back  will  look 
nearly  as  well  as  the  Vuillaume  Stradi- 
uarius, but  not  quite.  The  belly  will  look 
a  little  better  if  properly  prepared  ;  will 
show  the  fiber  of  the  deal  better.  But 
its  principal  merit  is  that,  like  the  violins 
of  Cremona,  it  will  vastly  improve  in 
beauty  if  much  exposed  and  persistently 
played.  And  that  improvement  will  be 
rapid,  because  the  tender  top  varnish  will 
wear  away  from  the  oily  substratum  four 
times  as  quickly  as  any  vulgar  varnish  of 
the  day  will  chip  or  wear.  We  cannot  do 
what  Stradiuarius  could  not  do — give  to 
a  new  violin  the  peculiar  beauty,  that 
comes  to  heterogeneous  varnishes  of 
Cremona  from  age  and  honest  wear ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  one  hundred  years  are  required 
to  develop  the  beauty  of  any  Cremona 
varnishes,  old  or  new.  The  ordinary 
wear  of  a  century  cannot  be  condensed 
into  one  year  or  five,  but  it  can  be  con- 
densed into  twenty  years.  Any  young 
ameteur  may  live  to  play  on  a  magnifi- 
cent Cremona  made  for  himself,  if  he  has 
the  enthusiasm  to  follow  my  directions. 
Choose  the  richest  and  finest  wood  ;  have 
the  violin  made  after  the  pattern  of  a 
rough  Joseph  Guarnerius  :  then  you  need 
not  sand-paper  the  back,  sides,  or  head, 
for  sand-paper  is  a  great  enemy  to  var- 
nish :  it  drives  more  wood-dust  into  the 
pores  than  you  can  blow   out.     If   you 


sand-paper  the  belly,  sponge  that  finer 
dust  out,  as  far  as  possible,  and  varnish 
when  dry.  That  will  do  no  harm,  and 
throw  up  the  fiber.  Make  your  own  lin- 
seed-oil— the  linseed  oil  of  commerce  is 
adulterated  with  animal  oil  and  fish  oil, 
which  are  non-drying-  oils— and  varnish 
as  I  have  indicated  above,  and  when  the 
violin  is  strung  treat  it  regularly  with  u 
view  to  fast  wear ;  let  it  hang  up  in  a 
warm  place,  exposed  to  dry  air,  night 
and  day.  Never  let  it  be  shut  up  in  a 
case  except  for  transport.  Lend  it  for 
months  to  the  leader  of  an  orchestra. 
Look  after  it,  and  see  that  it  is  constantly 
played  and  constantly  exposed  to  dry  air 
all  about  it  Never  clean  it,  never  touch 
it  with  a  silk  handkerchief.  In  twenty 
years  your  heterogeneous  varnishes  will 
have  parted  company  in  many  places. 
The  back  will  be  worn  quite  picturesque  : 
the  belly  will  look  as  old  as  Joseph  Guar- 
nerius; there  will  be  a  delicate  film  on  the 
surface  of  the  grand  red  varnish  mellowed 
by  exposure,  and  a  marvelous  fire  below. 
In  a  word,  you  will  have  a  glorious  Ci'e- 
mona  fiddle.  Do  you  aspire  to  do  more. 
and  to  make  a  downright  old  Cremona 
violin?  Then,  my  young  friend,  you 
must  treat  yourself  as  well  as  the  violin  ; 
you  must  not  smoke  all  day,  nor  the  last 
thing  at  night  ;  you  must  never  take  a 
dram  before  dinner  and  call  it  bitters: 
you  must  be  as  true  to  your  spouse  as 
ever  you  can,  and,  in  a  word,  live  moder- 
ately, and  cultivate  good  temper  and 
avoid  great  wrath.  By  these  means, 
Deo  volente,  you  shall  live  to  see  the  vio- 
lin that  was  made  for  you  and  varnished 
by  my  receipt,  as  old  and  worn  and  beau- 
tiful a  Cremona  as  the  Joseph  Guarnerius 
No.  94,  beyond  which  nothing  can  go. 

To  show  the  fiddle-maker  what  may  be 
gained  by  using  as  little  sand-paper  as 
possible,  let  him  buy  a  little  of  Maunder's 
palest  copal  varnish  ;  then  let  him  put  a 
piece  of  deal  on  his  bench  and  take  a  few 
shavings  off  it  with  a  carpenter's  plane. 
Let  him  lay  his  varnish  directly  on  the 
wood  so  planed.  It  will  have  a  fire  and 
a  beauty  he  will  never  quite  attain  to  by 
scraping,  sand-papering,  and  then  var- 
nishing the  same   wood   with   the  same 


250 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READK. 


varnish.  And  this  applies  to  bare-wood 
as  well  as  deal.  The  back  of  the  Vuil- 
laume  Stradiuarius,  which  is  the  finest 
part,  has  clearly  not  been  sand-papered 
in  places,  so  probably  not  at  all.  Where- 
over  it  is  possible,  varnish  after  cold  steel, 
at  all  events  in  imitating  the  Cremonese, 
and  especially  Joseph  Guarnerius.  These, 
however,  are  minor  details,  which  I  have 
only  inserted,  because  I  foresee  that  1 
may  be  unable  to  return  to  this  subject 
in  writing,  though  I  shall  be  very  happy 
to  talk  about  it  at  my  own  place  to  anj 
one  who  really  cares  about  the  d 
However,  it  is  uol  everyday  one  cm  re- 
store a  Los1  art  l  o  I  ho  world  :  and 
ii.it.  and  my  anxiety  uol  1"  do  it  by 
halves,  «  ill  excuse  t  ins  prolix  arl 

(   it  \u.i  3    RE  U>E. 


THE 


DOCTRINE     OF     COINCI- 
DENCES. 

To  the  Era  tob  oi  '   I 


FIRST  LETTER. 

Sir — In  reply  to  your  query — it  is  true 
that  after  the  trial  at  Nisi  Prius.  where 
"the  Claimant"'  was  plaintiff,  but  be- 
fore his  trial  a1  Bar  as  defendant,  1  pro- 
nounced him  to  be  Arthur  Orton.  and 
gave  my  reasons. 

These  you  now  invite  me  to  repeat.  1 
will  do  so  ;  only  let  me  premise  that  I  am 
not  so  vain  as  to  think  I  can  say  any- 
thing essentially  new  on  this  subject, 
which  has  been  fully  discussed  by  men 
superior  to  me  in  attainments. 

It  so  happens,  however,  that  those 
superior  men  have  always  veiled  a  part 
of  their  own  mental  process,  though  it 
led  them  to  a  just  conclusion  :  they  have 
never  staled  in  direct  terms  their  major 


premiss,  or  leading  principle.  This  is 
a  common  omission,  especially  among 
Anglo-Saxon  reasoners :  but  it  is  a  posi- 
tive defect,  and  one  I  do  think  I  can 
supply.  But  before  we  come  to  the  debat- 
able matter.  I  fear  I  must  waste  a  few 
words  on  the  impossible — namely,  that 
this  man  is  Roger  Charles  Tichborne. 

Well.    then,    let     those    who    have     not 

studied  the  evidence  and  cross-examina- 

i  ion,  .in-;   casl    then-  e\  es  on   this   paper 

a  sample  of  whal   they  must   be- 

Le\  e,  or  else  reject  that  chimera. 

Thai  Roger  Tichborne  was  drowned 
with  thirty  more,  yet  reappeared  years 
after,  all  alone,  leaving  at  the  bottom  of 
the  sea  all  his  companions,  and  certain 
miscellaneous  articles,  vi/.  : 

1.  His  affection  for  ins  mother,  his 
brother,  and  others. 

2.  His  handwriting. 

3.  His  leanness. 

4.  His  French. 

5.  His   love   of    writing  letters  to  his 

folk. 

6.  His  knowledge  of  Chateaubriand, 
and  his  comprehension  of  what  the  douce 
lie,  Roger  Tichborne,  was  writing  aboul 
when  he  put  upon  paper — before  lus  sub- 
mersion —that  he  admired  Rene,  and  gave 

his  reasons. 

:.  His  knowledge  of  the  Tichborne 
estates,  and  the  counties  they  lay  in. 

8.  His  knowledge  of  his  mother's  Chris- 
tian names. 

9.  His  knowledge  of  his  beloved  sweet- 
heart 's  face,  lie-iire.  and  voice. 

10.  His  tatt narks,  three  inches  long. 

11.  His  religion. 

1-.'.  Five  years  of  his  life.  These  five 
years  lay  full  fathom  five  at  the  bottom 
oi  ill-'  ocean  hard  by  No.  10,  when  tins 
aristocratic  Papist  married  a  servant  girl 
ina  Baptist  chapel,  and  was  only  thirty 
years  old,  as  appears  on  the  register  in 
Ins  handwriting,  which  is  nothing  like 
Tichborne"s.  Along  with  this  rubbish  we 
may  as  well  sweep  away  the  last  inven- 
tion of  weak  and  wavering  intellects, 
that  the  Claimant  is  no  individual  in  par- 
ticular, but  a  sort  of  solidified  myth,  in- 
carnate alias,  or  obese  hallucination. 

And  now  having  applied  our  besoms  to 


READ! AX  A. 


251 


the  bosh,  let  us  apply  our  minds  to  the 
debatable.  Since  he  is  not  dead  Castro, 
nor  dead  Tichborne,  nor  live  Alias,  who 
is  he  ?  Here  then  to  those,  who  go 
with  me  so  far,  I  proceed  to  state  the 
leading  principle,  which  g-overns  the  case 
thus  narrowed,  and  —  always  implied, 
though  unfortunately  never  stated— led 
our  courts  to  a  reasonable  conclusion. 
That  principle  is  : 

THE  PROGRESSIVE  VALUE  OF  PROVED  CO- 
INCIDENCES ALL  POINTING  TO  ONE  CON- 
CLUSION. 

Pray  take  notice  that  by  proved  coin- 
cidences I  mean  coincidences  that  are — 

1.  Not  merely  seeming-,  but  independent 
and  real. 

2.  Either  undisputed,  or  indisputable. 

3.  Either  extracted  from  a  hostile  wit- 
ness, which  is  the  highest  kind  of  evi- 
dence, especially  where  the  witness  is  a 
deliberate  liar  ;  or 

4.  Direct  ly  sworn  to  by  respectable 
witnesses  in  open  court,  and  then  cross- 
examined  and  not  shaken — which  is  the 
next  best  evidence  to  the  involuntary  ad- 
missions of  a  liar  interested  in  concealing 
the  truth. 

Men  born  to  be  deceived  like  children 
may  think  these  precautions  extravagant: 
but  they  are  neither  excessive  nor  new  : 
they  are  sober,  true,  and  just  to  both  the 
parties  in  every  mortal  cause ;  they 
have  been  for  ages  the  safeguard  of  all 
great  and  wary  minds  :  and  neither  I  nor 
any  other  man  can  lay  down  any  general 
position  of  reasoning,  that  will  guide  men 
aright,  who  are  so  arrogant,  so  ignorant, 
or  so  weak  as  to  scorn  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  your  readers  will 
accept  these  safeguards,  the  general  prin- 
ciple I  have  laid  down  will  never  deceive 
them  :  it  will  show  them  who  the  Claim- 
ant is,  and  it  will  aid  them  in  far 
greater  difficulties  and  more  important 
inquiries  ;  for,  like  all  sound  principles  of 
I  reason,  it  is  equally  applicable  to  ques- 
I  tions  of  science,  literature,  history,  or 
crime. 

I  am,  sir. 

Yours  faithfully. 

Charles  Reade. 


SECOND  LETTER. 

Sir — A  single  indisputable  coincidence 
raises  a  presumption  that  often  points 
toward  the  truth. 

A  priori  what  is  more  unlikely  than 
that  the  moon,  a  mere  satellite  and  a  very 
small  body,  should  so  attract  the  giant 
earth  as  to  cause  our  tides  ?  Indeed,  for 
years  science  rejected  the  theory  ;  but  cer- 
tain changes  of  the  tide  coinciding  regu- 
larly with  changes  of  the  moon  wore  out 
prejudice,  and  have  established  the  truth. 
Yet  these  coincident  changes,  though  re- 
peated ad  infinitum,  make  but  one  logical 
coincidence. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  owned 
that  a  single  coincidence  often  deceives. 
To  take  a  sublunary  and  appropriate 
example,  the  real  Martin  Guerre  had  a 
wart  on  his  cheek ;  so  had  the  sham 
Martin  Guerre.  The  coincidence  was 
genuine  and  remarkable;  yet  the  men 
were  distinct.  But  mark  the  ascending 
ratio — see  the  influence  on  the  mind  of  a 
double  coincidence— when  the  impostor 
with  the  real  wart  told  the  sisters  of 
Martin  Guerre  some  particular's  of 'their 
family  history,  and  reminded  Martin's 
wife  of  something  he  had  said  to  her  on 
their  bridal  night,  in  the  solitude  of  the 
nuptial  chamber,  this  seeming  knowledge, 
coupled  with  that  real  wart,  struck  her 
mind  with  the  force  of  a  double  coinci- 
dence, and  no  more  was  needed  to  make 
her  accept  the  impostor,  and  cohabit  with 
him  for  years. 

Does  not  this  enforce  what  I  urged  in 
my  first  letter  as  to  the  severe  caution 
necessary  in  receiving  alleged,  or  seem- 
ing, or  manipulated  coincidences,  as  if 
they  were  proved  and  real  ones  ?  How- 
ever, I  use  the  above  incident  at  present 
mainly  to  show  the  ascending  power  on 
the  mind  of  coincidences  when  received 
as  genuine. 

I  will  now  show  their  ascending  value 
when  proved  in  open  court  and  tested  by 
cross-examination. 

A  was  found  dead  of  a  gunshot  wound, 
and  the  singed  paper  that  had  been  used 
for  wadding  lay  near  him.  It  was  a  frag- 
ment   of    the    Times.      B's    house    was 


252 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


searched,  and  they  found  there  a  gun  re- 
cently discharged,  and  the  copy  of  the 
Times,  from  which  the  singed  paper  afore- 
said had  been  torn  ;  the  pieces  fitted 
exactly. 

The  same  thing-  happened  in  France 
with  a  slight  variation  ;  the  paper  used 
for  wadding  was  part  of  an  old  breviary, 
subsequently  found  in  B's  house. 

The  salient  facts  of  each  case  made  a 
treble  coincidence.  What  was  the  result ? 
The  treble  coincidence  sworn,  cross-ex- 
amined, and  unshaken,  hanged  the 
Englishman,  and  guillotined  the  i 
man.  In  neither  case  was  there  a  scin- 
tilla of  direct  evidence;  in  neither  case 
was  the  verdict  impugned. 

1  speak  within  bounds  when  1  saj  thai 
a  genuine  double  coincidence,  proved  be- 
yond doubt,  is  not  twice,  but  two  hundred 
times,  as  strong  as  one  such   coincidence, 

and  that  a  genuine  treble  c cidence  is 

many  thousand  tunes  as  strong  as  one 
such  coincidence.  But,  when  we  gel  to  a 
tic  fold  coincidence  real  and  proved,  it  is 

a  million  to  < againsl  all  these  honest 

circumstances  having  combined  to 

As  for  a  seven-fold  coincidence  not 
manipulated,  nor  merely  alleged,  but 
fully  proved,  doeseither  history,  science. 
literature,  or  crime  offer  one  example  of 
its  ever  misleading  the  human  mind? 
Why,  the  very  existence  of  seven  inde- 
pendent and  indisputable  coincidences,  all 
pointing'  to  one  conclusion,  is  a  rarity  so 
great,  that,  in  all  my  reading.  1  hardbj 
know  where  to  find  an  example  of  it  ex- 
cepl  in  the  defense  thai  baffled  this  claim- 
ant at  Nisi  Prius. 

Now.  on  that  occasion,  the  parties  en- 
countered each  other  plump  on  various 
lines  of  evidence.  There  were  direct  rec- 
ognitions  of  his  personal  identity  by  re- 
spectable witnesses,  and  direct  disavowals 
of  the  same  by  respectable  witnesses,  just 
as  there  were  in  the  case  of  the  sham 
Martin  Guerre,  who  brought  thirty  honest 
disinterested  witnesses  to  swear  he  was 
the  man  he  turned  out  not  to  be. 

With  this  part  of  the  case  I  will  not 
meddle  here,  though  I  have  plenty  to  say 
upon  it. 


But  both  parties  also  multiplied  coinci- 
dences :  only  some  of  these  were  real, 
some  apparent,  some  manipulated,  some 
honest  and  independent,  some  said  or 
sworn  out  of  court  by  liars,  who  knew 
better  than  venture  into  the  witness-box 
with  them:  some  proved  by  cross-exam- 
ination, or  in  spite  of  it.  We  have  only 
to  subject  this  hodge-podge  of  real  and 
sham  to  the  approved  test  laid  down  in 
my  first  letter,  and  we  shall  see  daylight ; 
for  the  Claimant's  is  a  clear  case,  made 
obscure  by  verbosity,  and  conjecture  in 
eeth  of  truth  ! 

A.  He  proved  in  court  a  genuine  coin-- 
cidence  of  a  corporeal  kind — viz.,  thai 
Roger  Tichborne  was  in-kneed,  with  the 
left  leg  turned  out  more  than  the  right, 
and  the  Claimant  was  in-kneed  in  a  simi- 
lar way. 

This  is  a  remarkable  coincidence,  and 
cross-examination  failed  to  shake  it. 

Bui  when  he  attempted  to  prove  a 
second  coincidence  of  corporeal  peculiar- 
it  ies  like  t  he  above,  winch,  being  the  work 
of  Nature,  cannot  be  combated,  what  a 
falling  off  in  I  lie  evidence. 

B.  They  found  in  the  Claimant  aeon- 
genital  brown  mark  on  the  side:  they 
could  only  assert  or  imagine  a  similar 
mark  in  Tichborne.  No  ririi  voce  evi- 
dence by  eyo-w itnessesto  anything-  of  the 
sort. 

C.  The\r  proved,  by  Dr. Wilson,  a  pe- 
culiar formation  in  the  Claimant  :  hut  in- 
stead of  proving  by  some  doctor,  surgeon, 
or  eye-witness  a  similar  formation  in 
Tichborne,  they  wenl  oil'  into  wild  infer- 
ences. The  eccentric  woman,  who  kept 
her  boy  three  years  under  a  seton,  had 
also  kept  him  a  long  time  in  frocks  ;  a  no 
the  same  boy.  when  a  moody  young-  man. 
had  written  despondent  phrases,  such  as. 
in  all  other  cases,  imply  a  dejected  mind, 
but  here  are  to  be  perverted  to  indicate  a 
malformed  body,  although  many  doctors, 
surgeons,  and  nurses,  knew  Tichborne's 
body,  and  not  one  of  all  these  ever  saw 
this  malformation  which,  in  the  nude 
body,  must  have  been  visible  fifty  yards 
off.  In  short,  the  coincidences  B  and  C, 
were  proved  incidences  with  unproved 
"Co's."' 


RE  A  MAS' A. 


253 


Failing  to  establish  a  double  coinci- 
dence of  congenital  features  or  marks,  the 
Claimant  went  off  into  artificial  skin 
marks. 

Examples  :  Roger  had  marks  of  a  se- 
ton  ;  the  Claimant  showed  marks  of  a 
similar  kind. 

Roger  had  a  cut  at  the  back  of  his 
head,  and  another  on  his  wrist.  So  had 
the  Claimant. 

Roger  had  the  seams  of  a  lancet  on  his 
ankles.  The  Claimant  came  provided 
with  punctures  on  the  ankle. 

Roger  winked  and  blinked.  So  did  the 
Claimant. 

Then  there  was  something  about  a 
mark  on  the  eyelid  ;  but  on  this  head  I 
forget  whether  the  Claimant's  witness 
ever  faced  cross-examination.  Nor  does 
it  very  much  matter,  for  all  these  artificial 
coincidences  are  rotten  at  the  core  :  un- 
like the  one  true  corporeal  coincidence  the 
Claimant  proved,  they  could  all  be  imi- 
tated ;  and,  as  regards  the  ankles,  imita- 
tion was  reasonably  suspected  in  court, 
for  the  Claimant's  needle-pricks  were  un- 
like the  seam  of  a  lancet,  and  were  not 
applied  to  the  ankle-pulse,  as  they  would 
have  been,  by  a  surgeon,  on  lean  Tich- 
borne,  in  whom  the  saphena  vein  would 
be  manifest,  and  even  the  ankle-pulse  per- 
ceptible, though  not  in  a  fair,  fat,  and 
false  representative.  Then  the  seton 
marks  were  stiffly  disputed,  and  the 
balance  of  medical  testimony  was  that 
the  Claimant's  marks  were  not  of  that 
precise  character. 

These  doubtful  coincidences  were  also 
encountered  by  direct  dissidences  on  the 
same  line  of  observation.  Roger  was 
bled  in  the  temporal  artery,  and  the 
Claimant  showed  no  puncture  there. 
Roger  was  tattooed  with  a  crown,  cross, 
and  anchor  by  a  living  witness,  who  faced 
cross-examination,  and  several  witnesses 
in  the  cause  saw  the  tattoo  marks  at  vari- 
ous times ;  and  it  was  no  answer  to  all  this 
positive  evidence  to  bring  witnesses  who 
did  not  tattoo  him,  and  other  witnesses 
who  never  saw  the  tattoo  marks.  The  pick- 
pocket who  brought  twenty  witnesses  that 
did  not  see  him  pick  a  certain  pocket, 
against  two  who  did,  was  defeated  by  the 


intrinsic  nature  of  evidence.  I  shall  ask 
no  person  to  receive  any  coincidence  from 
me  that  was  so  shaken  and  made  doubtful, 
and  also  neutralized  by  dissidences,  as  the 
imitable  skin  marks  in  this  case  were. 
But  the  Claimant  also  opened  a  large 
vein  of  apparent  coincidences  in  the  knowl- 
edge shown  by  him  at  certain  times  and 
places  of  numerous  men  and  things  known 
to  Rog'er  Tichborne.  These  were  very 
remarkable.  He  knew  private  matters 
known  to  Tichborne  and  A,  to  Tichborne 
and  B,  to  Tichborne  and  C,  etc.,  and  he 
knew  more  about  Tichborne  than  A,  B,  C. 
etc.,  individually  knew.  It  is  not  fair  nor 
reasonable  to  pooh-pooh  this.  But  the 
defendants  met  this  fairly  ;  they  said 
these  coincidences  were  not  arrived  at  by 
his  being  Tichborne,  but  by  his  pumping 
various  individuals  who  knew  Tichborne  : 
and  they  applied  fair  and  sagacious  tests 
to  the  matter. 

They  urged  as  a  general  truth  that 
Tichborne  in  Australia  would  have  known 
just  as  much  about  himself,  his  relations, 
and  his  affairs  as  he  subsequently  knew 
in  England.  And  I  must  do  them  the 
justice  to  say  this  position  is  impregnable. 
Then  they  went  into  detail  and  proved 
that  when  Gibbs  first  spotted  the  Claim- 
ant at  Wagga- Wagga,  he  was  as  ignorant 
as  dirt  of  Tichborne  matters :  did  not 
know  the  Christain  names  of  Tichborne's 
mother,  nor  the  names  of  the  Tichborne 
estates,  nor  the  counties  where  they  lay. 
They  then  showed  the  steps  by  which  his 
ignorance  might  have  been  partly  less- 
ened and  much  knowledge  picked  up,  they 
showed  a  lady,  who  longed  to  be  deceived, 
and  all  but  said  so,  putting  him  by  letter  on 
to  Bogle — Bogle  startled,  and  pumped — 
the  Claimant  showing  the  upper  part  of 
his  face  in  Paris  to  the  lady  who  wanted 
to  be  deceived,  and,  after  recognition  on 
those  terms,  pumping  her  largely  ;  then 
coming  to  England  with  a  large  stock  of 
fact  thus  obtained,  and  in  England  pump- 
ing Carter,  Bulpitt,  and  others,  searching 
Lloyd's,  etc. 

2.  Having  proved  the  gradual  growth 
of  knowledge  in  the  Claimant  between 
Wagga-  Wagga  and  the  Court  of  Common 
Pleas,  they  took  him  in  court  with  all  his 


254 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


acquired  knowledge,  and  cross-examined 
him  on  a  vast  number  of  things  well 
known  to  Tichborne.  Under  this  test,  for 
which  his  preparations  were  necessarily 
imperfect,  he  betrayed  a  mass  of  igno- 
rance on  a  multitude  of  things  familiar 
to  Roger  Tichborne,  and  he  betrayed  it 
not  frankly  as  honesl  men  be traj'  igno- 
rance, or  oblivion  of  what  they  have  once 
really  known,  but  in  spite  of  such  fencing, 
evading,  shuffling,  and  equivocating,  as 
the  most  experienced  have  rarely  seen  in 
the  witness-box.  Personating  a  gentle- 
man, he  shuffled  with  ou1  a  blush;  person- 
al ing  a  collegian,  he  did  nol  know  what  a 
quadrangle  is.  The  inscription  over  the 
Stonyhursl  quadrangle,  "  Laus  Deo,"  was 
strange  to  him.  He  1  hougb.1  it 
something  aboul  the  laws  of  God.  He 
knew  no  French,  no  Latin.  He  bl 
Caesar  was  a  Greek:  and.  when  a 
crucial  test  was  offered  him,  which,  if 
he  had   been  Ticl  \  ould    lia\  e 

welcomed  with  delight,  and  turned  the 
ii  ins  favor,  when  a  thoughtful 
comment  in  Rogi  r  Tichborne  <>u  t  he 
character  of  Bene  was  submitted  to  him, 
and  he  was  quesl  ioned  aboul  I  his  Rene, 
he  was  utterly  flabbergasted.  He  wrig- 
gled, and  writhed,  and  brazened  out  his 
ignorance,  but  it  shone  forth  in  spite  of 
him.  He  was  evidently  not  the  man. 
who  had  tasted  Chateaubriand,  ami 
had  written  a  thoughtful  comment  on 
I  lis  tnind  w  as  net  I  hat  mind,  any 
mere  than  his  handwriting  was  thai 
handwriting. 

To  judge  this  whole  vein  of  coinci- 
dences, ami  their  neutralizing  dissi- 
dences,  the  jury  had  now  before  them 
three  streams  of  fact. 

1.  That  at  Wagga-Wagga  the  Claim- 
ant knew  nothing  about  Tichborne  more 
than  the  advertisements  told  him. 

2.  That  in  England  he  knew  an  incred- 
ible number  of  things  about  Tichborne. 

3.  That  in  England  he  took  Mrs.  Towne- 
ley  for  Roger's  sweetheart,  ami.  even  at 
the  trial,  was  ignorant  of  many  tilings 
Tichborne  could  not   he  ignorant  of. 

NOW,  IX  ALL  CASES,  WHERE  THERE 
ALE  SEVERAL  FA(  TS  INDISPUTABLE,  YET 
SEEMINGLY     OPPOSED,    SCIENCE     DECLARES 


THE  TRUE  SOLUTION  TO  BE  THAT,  WHICH. 
SETTING  ASIDE  THE  DOUBTFUL  FACTS, 
RECONCILES  ALL  THE  INDISPUTABLE 
FACTS. 

This  maxim  is  infallible  : 

The  good  sense  of  the  jury  led  them  to 
this  solutieii  as  surely  as  Science  would 
have  hd  a  jury  of  Huxleys  and  Tindals 
to  it:  and  they  decided  thai  the  coinci- 
dences were  remarkable,  but  manipu- 
lated, the  knowledge  astonishing,  but 
acquired,  the  ignorance  an  inevitable 
residue,  which  only  Tichborne  could  have 
escaped.  They  saw  a  small  pump  work- 
ing in  Australia,  a  large  pump  work- 
ing in  Paris,  a  huge  pump  working  in 
England,  bul  a  human,  and  therefore 
Unite,  pump  after  all.  as  proved  in  court 
by   examination    of  the   Radcliffes,   Gos- 

ford,     and      ol  hers  ;     and.     above    all.    b\ 

cross-exa  minai  ion  of  i  he  <  llaimant,  which 
last  is  t  he  highesl  e\  idence. 

So  much  for  the  single  genuine  coinci- 
dence ol  knees,  and  t  he  manipulated 
coincidences  of  artificial  skin  marks,  and 
i  knowledge,  relied  on  for  the 
aant. 

At  this  stage  your  readers  should  ask 
themselves  t  wo  quesl  io 

1st.  Is  not  history  printed  experience ; 
and  ought  experience  to  be  printed  in 
vain  ? 

Did  not  the  real  wart,  and  the  simu- 
lated knowledge,  and  the  thirty  direct 
witnesses  of  the  sham    Martin    Guerre, 

anticipate  the  broad  out  line  of  tins  (  Vanu- 
atu 's  c 

3d.  As  regards  the  coincidences,  which 
were  not  only  open  to  the  charge  of  ma- 
nipulation, but  also  neutralized  by  dissi- 
dences,  are  they  mighty  enough  to  con- 
vince any  candid  mind  that  a  fat.  live 
person — who  slaughtered  bullocks  and 
married  a  housemaid,  and  swore  in  the 
box  without  a  blush  that  he  had  lied, 
like  a  low  fellow,  to  his  friend  and  bene- 
factor, Gibbs,  and  that  he  well  knew,  and 
had  loved,  and  after  the  manner  of  the 
lower  orders  seduced  a  lady  (though  he 
afterward  took  Mrs.  Townely  for  her), 
and  still  following  the  lower  orders, 
blasted  her  reputation — was  the  lean, 
dead    aristocrat,    Tichborne,    who    went 


READIANA. 


^'5.3 


down  in  the  Bella,  with  all  hands,  not 
one  of  whom  has  reappeared,  and  died, 
as  he  had  lived,  the  delicate,  loyal  lover 
of  the  chaste  Kate  Doughty — and  a  gen- 
tleman— and  a  man  of  honor? 

I  will  now  show,  in  contrast,  the  indis- 
putable coincidences,  which,  converging 
from  different  quarters,  all  point  to  one 
conclusion — that  the  Claimant  is  Arthur 
Orton,  of  Wapping. 
I  am.  sir. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 


THIRD  LETTER. 

Sir — I  now  venture  to  hope  that  all  I 
have  written  will  seem  silly  to  fanatics, 
and  that  unprejudiced  minds  will  grant 
me — 

1.  That,  where  there  are  indisputable 
facts  and  doubtful  ones,  the  true  solution 
is  that,  which  ignores  the  doubtful,  and 
reconciles  all  the  indisputable  facts. 

2.  That  two  coincidences  are  a  hun- 
dred times  as  strong  as  one  ;  and  five 
coincidences  a  million  times  as  strong  as 
one ;  and  so  on  in  a  gigantic  ratio  as 
the  coincidences  multiply. 

3.  That  coincidences,  like  other  circum- 
stances, must  rest  on  legal  evidence,  and 
that  there  is  a  scale  of  legal  evidence, 
without  which  a  man  would  be  all  at  sea 
in  any  great  trial,  since  such  trials  arise 
out  of  a  conflict  of  evidence.  I  indicated 
this  scale  in  my  first  letter ;  but  as  it  is 
not  encountered,  but  ignored  in  all  the 
replies  I  have  seen,  I  will  amplify  and 
enforce  it. 

THE    SCALE    OF    EVIDENCE. 

A.  A  written  affidavit,    not  cross-exam- 

ined, is  "  PERJURY  MADE  EASY." 

B.  A  written  affidavit,  signed  by  a  per- 

son who  could  carry  his  statement 
into  open  court,  but  does  not,  is 
perjury  declared  :  for.  when  a 
man's  actions  contradict  his  words, 
it  is  his  words  that  lie. 


C.  In  open  court  tin'  Lowest  kind  of  evi- 

dence is  the  evidence  in  chief  of  the 
plaintiff,  or  defendant. 

D.  The  highest  evidence  is  the  admission, 

under  cross-examination,  of  the 
plaintiff  or  defendant. 

E.  The  next  highest  is  the   evidence   in 

chief  of  disinterested  persons,  not 
shaken  by  cross-examination. 

These  rules  were  not  invented  by  me, 
nor  for  me  nor  against  the  Claimant. 
They  are  very  old,  very  true,  and  equally 
applicable  to  every  great  trial — past, 
present,  and  to  come. 

Yel  you  have  a  correspondent  in  whose 
mind  this  scale  of  evidence  has  no  place; 
he  gravely  urges  that  the  bestial  hjho- 
rance  of  the  Tichborne  estates,  and  the 
bereaved  woman's  name  he  called  his 
mother,  shown  by  the  Claimant  at 
Wagga-Wagga,  in  his  very  will,  a  solemn 
instrument,  by  which  he  provided  for  his 
own  wife  and  expected  child,  was  not 
real,  as  forsooth  all  his  knowledge  was, 
but  feigned  in  order  to  humbug  his  pro- 
tector without  a  motive,  and  bilk  his  <>iru 
wife  out  of  her  sole  provision,  and  sole 
claims  on  the  Tichborne  property;  and 
for  this  self-evident  falsehood  your  corre- 
spondent's authority  is  the  evidence  of  the 
Claimant  himself,  a  party  in  the  suit,  and 
a  party  interested  in  lying,  and  throwing 
dust  in  the  eyes  of  simpletons,  who  can- 
not see  a  church  by  daylight  if  some  shal- 
low knave  says  it  is  a  pigeon  house. 

It  was  almost  as  childish  to  reply  to 
me  with  the  evidence  of  Moore.  What 
evidence  ?  Why,  he  never  ventured  into 
court. 

Mr.  Moore  is  a  humbug,  who  wrote 
down  a  romance,  and — fled.  Catch  him 
carrying  his  tale  into  the  witness-box, 
and  being  cross-examined  out  of  fiction's 
fairy  realm  into  one  of  her  majesty's 
jails.  See  scale  of  evidence  B.  These 
two  great  instruments  of  evidence,  men 
and  circumstances,  resemble  each  other 
in  this,  that  men  do  not  lie  without  a  mo- 
tive, and  circumstances  never  have  a  mo- 
tive, and  therefore  never  lie,  though  man 
may  misinterpret  them.  And  it  is  the 
beauty  of  true  coincidences  that  in  them 
circumstance    preponderates,    and    man 


256 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


plays  second  fiddle.  A  coincidence  often 
surprises  even  deceitful  men  into  reveal- 
ing- the  truth:  for  a  coincidence  is  two 
facts  pointing-  to  one  conclusion  :  and  the 
effect  of  the  first  fact  is  seldom  seen  till 
the  second  comes,  and  then  it  is  too  late 
to  tamper  effectually  with  the  pair. 

You  will  sec  this  pure  and  unforeseeing 
character  running  through  mosl  of  the 
coincidences  I  now  lay  before  you. 

i.  It  was  proved  thai  Tichborne  was 
in-kneed,  and  dead,  and  that  the  Claim- 
ant and  Arthur  Orton  are  in-kneed  and 
alive. 

2.  Disinterested  witnesses  swore  thai 
Arthur  Orton  was  unusually  stoul  at 
twenty;  and  was  called,  tit  Wapping, 
••bullocky"  Orton.  Later  m  Ins  life, 
Australian  witnesses,  who  knew  him,  de- 
scribed hmi  as  uncommonly  lusty.  The 
Claimant's  figure  is  described  in  similar 
terms  by  all  the  Australian  w  itnesses  who 
knew  him.  Now.  many  a  lean  youth  puts 
on  fat  between  thirty-five  and  forty,  bul 
lean,  acl  h  e  men  do  not  very  often  fatten 
from  twenty  to  t  Irirty.  This,  therefore, 
is  a  coincidence,  though  a  feeble  one. 

:.  Art  hur  <  )rton.  horn  September  13th, 
1832.  was  the  youngest  son  of  Q-eorge 
<  'i  ton.  ;i  shipping  butcher,  and  an  im- 
porter of  Shetland  ponies.  He  used  to 
ride  the  ponies  from  the  Dundee  steamers, 
and  so  ^'nt  a  horseman's  seat  ;  for  they 
are  awkward  animals  to  ride,  if  you  take 
them  like  that,  one  after  another,  raw 
from  the  Shetland  Isles.  When  full 
grown,  hut  under  age,  he  slaughtered 
and  dressed  sheep  and  bullocks  for  his 
father. 

The  Claimant  in  Australia  lived  by  rul- 
ing, and  slaughtering,  and  dressing 
beasts.  On  this  point,  his  own  evidence 
agrees  with  that  of  every  witness  who 
knew  him.  And  when  he  came  up  the 
Thames  in  the  ('el la  to  personate  Tich- 
borne, he  asked  the  pilot  what  had  he- 
come  of  Ferguson,  the  man  who  used  to 
he  pilot  of  the  Dundee  boats.  All  this 
taken  together  is  rather  a  strong  coinci- 
dence. It  may  seem  weak  :  but  apply  a 
test.  To  whom  does  all  this,  as  a  whole. 
apply  ?  The  riding — the  slaughtering — 
and    the   spontaneous  interest    in  an  old 


Dundee  pilot?  To  Castro?  To  Tich- 
borne ?  To  any  known  man  not  an  Or- 
ton ? 

4.  In  1S4S,  Arthur  Orton,  aged  1G, 
sailed  to  Valparaiso,  and  subsequently 
in  June,  1840,  made  his  way  to  Melipilla. 
He  was  young,  fair,  the  only  English 
boy  in  the  place,  and  the  good  people 
took  to  him.  He  made  friends  with 
Dona  Hay  ley.  wife  of  an  English  doc- 
tor, and  with  Thomas  Castro  and  his 
wife,  and  many  others.  They  were  very 
kind  to  him  m  184!»  and  '50,  particularly 
Dona  Hayley.  and  in  these  gentle  minds 
the  kindly  feeling  survived  the  lapse  of 
lime,  and  his  long  neglect  of  them.  Not 
foreseeing  in  1850  his  little  game  in  1866, 
Arthur  Orton  told  Dona  Hayley  he  was 
the  son  of  Orton.  the  queen's  butcher,  and 
as  a  child  had  played  with  the  queen's 
children.     Not    being  a  prophet,  all  this 

bounce   at    that    dale  went    to   aggrandize 

Orton.  Hi-  spoke  of  Arthur's  sisters,  by 
name,  and  Dona  Hayley,  twenty  years 
after,  remembered  the  names  with  slight 
and     natural    variations.      The    wile    of 

Tl as    Castro    was    called    at     Melipilla 

Dona  Natalia  Sarmiento:  but  this  En- 
glish  hoy.   knowing    her    to    lie   tin'  wife    of 

Castro,  used  to  call  her  .Mrs.  Castro. 

This  seems  to  have  amused  Dona  Hay- 
ley. and  she  noted  it.  This  hoy  was  not 
Castro,  for  Castro  was  :m  elderly  Span- 
iard, kind  to  his  hoy  on  the  spol  and  at 
t  lie  time.  He  was  not  Tichborne,  for 
Tichborne  was  in  England  till  late  in 
1852.  Tichborne's  alibi  during  Arthur  Or- 
ton's  whole  visit  to  Melipilla  is  proved 
by  a  cloud  of  witnesses,  and  his  own  writ- 
ing, and  is.  indeed,  admitted  ;  he  sailed 
late  in  1852,  and  reached  Chili  in  1853. 
Arthur  Orton  was  back  in  England, 
June.    1851. 

Now  so  much  of  this  as  respects  Arthur 
Orton  is  the  first  branch  of  a  pure,  un- 
foreseen coincidence.  The  second  branch 
is  this — The  Claimant  on  the  28th  August, 
1867,  wrote  from  his  solicitor's  office.  25, 
Poultry,  to  prepare  the  good  Melipillians 
for  a  new  theory — that  Arthur  Orton, 
seventeen  years  old  to  the  naked  eye,  was 
not  Castro — (that  cock  might  fight  in 
Hobart  Town,  but  not  in  Melipilla)  .  not 


KEADIAXA. 


257 


Castro,  but  Tichborne,  age  23.  He  wrote 
to  Thomas  Castro,  complained  he  was 
kept  out  of  his  estates,  and  begged  to 
be  kindly  remembered  to  Don  Juan  Hay- 
ley,  to  Clara  and  Jesusa,  to  Don  Ramon 
Alcade,  Dona  Hurtado,  to  Senorita  Ma- 
tilda, Jose  Maria  Berenguel,  and  his  bro- 
ther, and  others,  in  short  to  twelve  per- 
sons besides  Castro  himself.  One  of  the 
messages  has  per  se  the  character  of  a 
coincidence.  "  My  respects  to  Donna  Na- 
talia Sarmiento,  or  as  I  used  to  call  her, 
Mrs.  Castro." 

Thomas  Castro,  to  whom  this  was  sent, 
being  in  confinement  as  a  lunatic,  his  son, 
Pedro  Castro,  replied  in  a  letter  full  of 
kindness,  simple  faith,  and  a  desire  to 
serve  his  injured  friend.  His  letter  car- 
ries God's  truth  stamped  on  it.  His  re- 
plies to  the  kind  messages  accord  with 
our  sad  experience  of  time  and  its  rav- 
ages. "His  father  bereft  of  reason,  his 
mother — dead  this  fourteen  months.  Dona 
Hayley's  recollection  of  the  boy  perfect, 
and  she  is  ready  to  serve  him,  and  depose 
to  the  truth.  But  the  doctor's  memory 
gone  through  intemperance,  Dona  Jesusa 
dead."  "  Don  Jose  Maria  Berenguel  is  not 
so  called,  his  name  is  Don  Francesco  Beren- 
guel. He  is  established  at  Valparaiso." 
Then  the  writer  goes  on  to  say  what  had 
become  of  the  other  friends  inquired  after 
by  the  Claimant.  One  of  them  he  speci- 
fies in  particular  as  taking  fire  at  the 
Claimant's  letter,  and  remembering  all 
about  him,  and  desirous  to  serve  him,  he 
himself  being  animated  by  the  same  spirit, 
tells  him  that  Dona  Francesca  Ahumada 
retains  a  lock  of  his  hair,  which  he  sug- 
gests the  Claimant  might  turn  to  ac- 
count :  and  so  he  might  if  he  had  been 
Tichborne.  In  the  same  spirit  he  warns 
him  that  his  enemies  had  an  agent  at 
Melipilla  hunting  up  data  to  use  against 
him. 

The  correspondence  thus  begun  contin- 
ued in  the  same  spirit. 

The  whole  coincidence  is  this :  The 
Claimant  stayed  a  long  time  at  Meli- 
pilla in  1849  and  1S50,  and  called  him- 
self Arthur  Orton,  and  proved  himself 
Arthur  Orton,  by  giving  full  details  of 
his  family,  and  left  Chili  in   1850,  during 

Reade — Vol.  IX. 


all  which  time  an  aliba  is  proved  for 
Tichborne,  but  none  can  be  proved,  nor 
has  ever  been  attempted,  for  Arthur 
Orton.  On  the  contrary,  a  non  aliba 
was  directly  proved  for  him.  He  was 
traced  from  Wapping  to  Valparaiso, 
and  Melipilla,  in  1S4S.  His  stay  there 
till  1850  was  proved,  and  then  he  was 
traced  in  1S50  into  the  Jesse  Miller, 
and  home  to  Wapping  in  1S5L  just  as 
he  had  been  traced  out — by  ships'  regis- 
ters and  a  cloud  of  witnesses. 

The  coincidence  rests  on  the  two  high- 
est kinds  of  evidence,  the  Claimant's 
written  admission,  and  the  direct  evi- 
dence of  respectable  witnesses  unshaken 
by  cross-examination  (see  scale  of  evi- 
dence), and  it  points  to  the  Claimant 
as  Arthur  Orton. 

Those  who  can  see  he  is  not  Tichborne, 
but  are  deceived  by  the  falsehoods  of  men 
into  believing  he  is  not  Orton.  should  give 
special  study  to  this  coincidence  ;  for  here 
the  Claimant  is  either  Tichborne  or  Or- 
ton. No  third  alternative  is  possible. 
At  Melipilla,  in  1850,  he  was  either  Or- 
ton, who  was  there,  aged  17,  or  Tich- 
borne. who  was  in  England,  aged  23. 

5.  There  was,  for  some  years,  a  bulky 
man  in  Australia  riding  and  breaking 
horses,  slaughtering  and  dressing  beasts. 
His  name — Castro — appears  when  that  of 
Orton  disappears.  The  two  men  seem  to 
differ  in  name  but  not  in  figure  and  occu- 
pation. And  no  witness  ever  came  into 
the  witness-box  and  swore  that  he  had 
ever  seen  these  two  portly  butchers  in 
two  different  skins.  In  1867  the  Claimant 
explained  this  phenomenon. 

In  his  letter  to  Thomas  Castro  he  wrote 
thus:  —  "And  another  strange  thing  I 
have  to  tell  you,  and  I  have  no  doubt  you 
will  say  I  took  a  great  liberty  on  myself; 
that  is  to  say,  I  took  and  made  use  of 
your  name,  and  was  only  known  in 
Australia  by  the  name  of  Thomas  Cas- 
tro. I  said  also  I  belonged  to  Chili." 
He  adds,  however,  an  assurance  that  he 
had  never  disgraced  him  as  a  horseman. 
This  coincidence  proves  that  whenever 
we  meet  in  Australia  a  bulky  butcher 
stock-keeper,  horse-breaker,  etc.,  called 
Thomas  Castro,  of  Chili,  that  means  the 

"9 


258 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Claimant,  and  also  means  Arthur  Orton, 
of  Melipilla. 

And  Arthur  Orton,  of  Melipilla,  is 
Arthur  Orton  of  Wapping. 

6.  This  sham  Castro,  sham  Chilian, 
sham  aristocrat,  etc.,  married,  as  people 
do  nine  times  in  ten,  into  his  own  class. 
a  servant  girl  who  could  not  write  her 
name.  She  made  her  mark.  He  forged 
a  friend's  name.  Apparently  he  did  nut 
foresee  he  was  going  to  leave  off  sham- 
ming Castro  and  begin  shamming  Tich- 
borne,  a  stiff  Papist  ;  so  he  got  married 
by  a  dissenting  minister,  and  in  signing 
the  register,  described  himself  as  thirty 
years  old. 

Castro  was.  say  sixty  ;  Tichborne  was 
thirty-six.     Who  was  thirty? 
Arthur  Orton  of  Wapping. 

7.  It  was  the  interest  of  Gibbes  this 
man  should  lie  Tichborne.  His  wishes  in- 
fluenced his  judgment.  He  inclined  to 
think  he  was  the  right  man.  But  some 
things  staggered  him;  in  particular  the 
man's  want  of  education.  Gibbes  told 
him  frankly  thai  seemed  inconsistent. 
Then  the  Claimant,  to  get  over  that, 
told  Gibbes  thai  in  childhood  he  had  a 
nervous  affection  which  checked  his  edu- 
cation. He  then  described  this  affection 
so  correctly  that  Gibbes  said,  "  Bless  me. 
that  is  St.  Vitus's  dance.1'  "Yes,"'  said 
the  Claimant,  "thai  is  what  they  used  to 
call  it." 

This  solution  eased  Gibbes'  mind,  and 
he  sat  down  and.  honestly  enough,  sen', 
an  account  of  the  conversation  to  Lady 
Tichborne's  agenl  :  he  wrote  it  to  serve 
the  plaintiff,  not  foreseeing  the  turn  that 
revelation  of  the  truth  would  take. 

Coming  home  in  the  Rachaia  there  was 
some  document  or  other  to  be  read  out, 
and  the  pessengers  confided  this  to  the 
Claimant  as  a  person  claiming  the  high- 
est rank.  He  blundered  and  made  a 
mess  of  it,  and  showed  his  ignorance  so 
that  suspicion  was  raised,  and  one  Mi'. 
Hodson  put  it  pointblank  to  him — "  You 
a  baronet,  and  can't  read!"  Then  the 
Claimant  told  him  he  had  been  afflicted 
in  his  boyhood  with  St.  Vitus's  dance, 
and  could  not  learn  his  letters. 

It  was  afterward  proved  by  a  surgeon 


and  a  multitude  of  witnesses  that  at  ten 
years  of  age  Arthur  Orton  had  been 
frightened  by  a  fire,  and  afflicted  with 
St.  Vitus's  dance,  and  that  this  had 
really  checked  his  education,  and  that 
the  traces  of  it  had  remained  by  him  for 
years;  and  that,  in  fact,  he  was  sent  to 
sea  in  hopes  of  a  cure.  This  coincidence 
is  very  strong.  Observe— it  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  disease  ;  but  to  the  time  of 
life,  and  its  effect  on  a  boy's  education. 
No  doubt  a  third  man  neither  Tich- 
borne nor  Orton  might  have  St.  Vitus's 
dance  as  a  little  boy.  and  so  be  made  a 
dunce,  in  spite  of  great  natural  ability. 
There  is  not  above  a  hundred  thousand 
to  one  against  it  ;  but  coming  after  coin- 
cidences 4.  ."),  and  (>.  which  clear  away 
('astro  and  all  other  mere  vapors,  and 
confine  the  question  to  Tichborne  or  Or- 
ion, have  1  not  now  the  right  to  say, 
Tichborne.  by  admission  of  all  the  wit- 
nesses on  bol  h  shies,  never  had  St .  Vitus's 
dance:  Arthur  Orton  undisputably  had 
St.  Vitus's  dance;  the  Claimant,  to  ac- 
count, for  his  ignorance,  spontaneously 
declared,  at  different  times  and  to  differ- 
ent people,  that  he  had  been  afflicted  with 
St.  Vitus's  dance,  and  this  coincidence 
points  to  the  Claimant  as  Arthur  Orton 
of  Wapping  ? 

Yours  obediently, 

Charles  Reade 


FOURTH  LETTER. 

Sir — I  will  ask  those  who  have  done 
me  the  honor  to  keep  my  last  letter,  to 
draw  a  circle  on  a  sheet  of  paper,  the 
larger  the  better,  and  to  draw  seven 
radii  from  its  center  across  the  line  of 
circumference  to  the  edge  of  the  paper; 
then  upon  those  extended  radii,  and  be- 
tween the  circle  and  the  edge  of  the 
paper,  I  will  ask  them  to  write  in  small 
letters  a  short  epitome  of  each  coin- 
cidence, or  a  few  words  recalling  what 
they  consider  its  salient  feature. 

Those  who  will  do  me  the  honor  to  take 


EEADIAXA. 


259 


the  trouble,  and  so  become  my  fellow- 
laborers  in  logic,  will  not  repent  it.  It 
will,  I  think,  assist  them,  as  it  has  as- 
sisted me,  to  realize  how  vast  an  area 
both  of  territory  and  multifarious  evi- 
dence is  covered  at  the  circumference  by 
these  seven  coincidences,  which  neverthe- 
less converge  to  one  central  point,  no 
bigger  than  a  pin's  head,  viz.,  that  this 
Claimant,  who  has  owned  himself  a 
sham  Castro  of  Chili,  but  clings  to  his 
other  alias,  Tichborne,  is  Arthur  Orton 
of  Wapping. 

8.  From  the  day  the  Bella  foundered 
to  the  day  Gibbes  spotted  the  Claimant, 
a  period  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  years, 
Roger  Tichborne  never  wrote  a  line  to 
his  mother  or  his  brother,  or  any  relation 
or  friend.  This  is  accounted  for  rationally 
and  charitably  by  bis  being  dead  at  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean. 

No,  says  the  Claimant,  I  was  alive  all 
the  time,  and  let  my  mother  and  my 
brother  and  1113'  sweetheart  think  I  had 
died  horribly,  cut  off  in  mj7  prime. 

The  animal  never  realized  that  he  was 
both  drawing  upon  human  credulity,  and 
describing  a  monster  and  a  beast.  What 
was  it  that  so  blinded  his  most  power- 
ful understanding?  From  1852  to  1865 
Arthur  Orton  never  wrote  a  line  to 
Wapping.  He  let  the  father  who  reared 
him,  the  mother  who  bore  him,  go  to 
their  graves  without  one  little  word 
to  say  their  son  was  alive.  Not  a  line 
to  brother,  sister  or  sweetheart.  This 
unnatural  trait  being  absent  in  Tich- 
borne till  he  was  drowned,  and  present 
in  the  Claimant  by  his  own  confession, 
and  in  Arthur  Orton  by  a  pj^ramid  of 
evidence,  is  a  startling  coincidence  of  a 
new  class.  The  unnatural  heart  of  the 
Claimant  is  the  unnatural  heart  of  Arthur 
Orton. 

9.  In  1S52  Arthur  Orton  went  out  to 
Hobart  Town  with  two  Shetland  ponies 
in  the  Middleton. 

Subsequently,  as  the  Claimant  swore, 
he  was  for  years  at  Boisdale  and  Dargo, 
slaughtering  and  riding,  etc.,  in  the  ser- 
vice of  Mr.  W.  Foster,  and  under  the 
name  of  Castro,  the  Chilian.  Foster's 
widow  confirmed  most  of  this,  and  pro- 


duced her  account  books  for  1854,  55,  56, 
57  and  58,  with  full  details  of  the  Claim- 
ant's service  during  a  part  of  that  time  ; 
but  she  knew  him  as  Arthur  Orton,  and 
he  figured  as  Arthur  Orton  all  through 
the  books,  and  the  name  of  Castro  did 
not  occur  in  any  of  these  books.  The 
books  were  dry  account  books  written  in 
Australia,  with  a  short-sighted  view  to 
the  things  of  the  place  and  the  time,  and 
not  in  prophetic  anticipation  of  a  Lon- 
don trial,  that  lay  hid  in  the  womb  of 
time. 

Not  to  multiply  coincidences  unfairly, 
I  am  content  to  throw  in  here,  that  on  a 
page  of  a  book  produced  by  this  Austra- 
lian witness,  was  written  as  follows  : 

"  Dargo,  11th  3Iarch,  1858. 
"I,  Arthur  Orton,  etc.,"  vowing  ven- 
geance in  good  set  terms,  on  some  per- 
sons who  had  wronged  him. 

The  witness  had  no  doubt  this  was 
written  by  her  servant,  the  Claimant, 
whom,  by  the  by,  she  recognized  in  court 
as  her  Arthur  Orton  ;  and  two  judges 
compared  the  handwriting  with  the 
Claimant's  and  declared  positively  they 
were  identical.  Now,  the  judges  try  so 
many  questions  of  handwriting,  and  ex- 
amine so  many  skilled  witnesses,  that 
they  become  great  experts  in  all  matters 
of  this  kind  ;  and  as  they  are  judges  who 
— unlike  other  European  judges — can  and 
do  disagree,  I  think  their  consent  on  this 
matter,  though  not  sworn  evidence,  is 
very  convincing  to  any  candid  mind. 
However,  I  have  no  wish  to  press  this 
part  of  the  coincidence  separately,  or 
unduly ;  but  I  do  say  that,  taken  alto- 
gether, No.  9  is  a  most  weighty  coin- 
cidence. 

10.  A  pocket-book  was  produced  at  the 
trial  with  miscellaneous  entries  by  the 
Claimant,  artfully  inserted  to  identify 
him  with  Tichborne.  That  being  the 
object,  it  is  unfortunate  that  he  wrote 
down  as  follows — La  Bella,  R.  C.  Tich- 
borne arrived  at  Hobart  Town,  July  4, 
1854.  Because  at  the  trial  he  said  he 
landed  at  Melbourne. 

The    person    who    landed    at    Hobart 


2C0 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


Town  was  Arthur  Orton  in  the  Middle- 
ton.  In  this  same  book  he  wrote — Rod- 
ger Charles  Tichborne.  and  Miss  Mary 
Anne  Loader.  7,  Russell's  Buildings, 
High  Street,  Wapping.  Now,  here  are 
three  things  Roger  Tichborne  was  igno- 
rant of : 

1.  That  his  name  was  Rodger. 

2.  That  Mary  Anne  Loader  existed. 

3.  That  sin-  lived  at  7,  Russell's  Build- 
ings, High  Street,  Wapping. 

Now,  who  on  earth  was  this,  that 
landed,  not  at  Melbourne,  but  Hobart 
Town,  and  knew  so  little  about  Roger 
Tichborne,  and  so  much  about  Mary 
Anne  Loader? 

Who  could  it  be  but  Mary  Anne  Load- 
er's quondam  sweetheart,  whose  letters, 
written  in  the  Claimant's  handwriting, 
and  signed  Arthur  Orton,  she  broughl 
into  court,  and  identified  the  man  himself 
as  her  own  sweetheart,  Arthur  Orton  ? 

That  identification  would  be  valueless 
by  itself,  in  this  special  line  (if  argument, 
but  the  entry  in  i  lie  pocket-book  by  the 
Claimant's  own  hand  makes  it  a  coinci- 
dence. 

11.  At  Wagga  Wagga  the  Claimant, 
being  called  upon  to  play  the  part  of 
Tichborne.  made  a  will,  and  appointed 
executors,  to  wit.  ••John  Jarvis,  Esq.,  of 
Bridport,  Dorsetshire,  and  my  mot  her. 
Lady  Hannah  Frances  Tichborne." 
Failing  either  of  them,  he  appointed  Sir 
John  Bird,  of  Hertfordshire.  As  guar- 
dian of  his  children,  he  appointed  his 
friend  Gibbes:  and  failing  him.  Mr. 
Henry  Angell.  Now  when  all  this  was 
looked  into  by  the  other  side,  the  Claim- 
ant's aristocrat  ie  friend.  Sir  John  Bird, 
was  found  to  be  a  myth.  That  aristocrat 
existed,  like  the  Claimant's  own  preten- 
sions to  aristocracy,  in  the  Claimant's 
imagination  ;  but  the  plebeians  were  real 
men  :  friends  of  Tichborne  ?  Of  course 
not.  Jarvis  and  Angell  were  old  friends 
of  Arthur  Orton.  When  this  was  dis- 
covered, the  Claimant  pretended  these 
plebeian  executors  were  suggested  to 
him  by  Arthur  Orton  ;  but  Arthur  Or- 
ton was  not  on  the  spot,  except  in  the 
skin  of  the  Claimant;  out  of  that  skin 
neither  Gibbes  nor  any  witness  saw  him 


at  Wagga  Wagga  when  that  will  was 
drawn.  At  the  trial  Angell  recognized 
the  Claimant  as  his  old  acquaintance, 
Arthur  Orton,  and  that  evidence  con- 
firms a  coincidence  which  was  already 
very  striking. 

12.  The  Claimant  came  home,  asked 
after  Ferguson,  Arthur  Orion's  old 
friend,  as  he  steamed  up  the  river, 
and  at  last  got  to  Ford's  Hotel  with 
his  wife. 

It  was  Christmas  Day,  a  cold  evening, 
and  he  was  in  the  bosom  of  his  family, 
which  people  do  not  leave  for  strangers 
on  Christmas  night.  What  does  lie  do? 
Gets  up,  leaves  his  family  and  the  Christ- 
mas fire,  and  goes  off  all  alone  in  a  four- 
wheel. 

Where  to  ? 

To  Tichborne? 

To  some  place  where  the  Tichborne 
family   could  be  heard   of? 

No  ;  to  Wapping. 

He  gets  to  the  Globe,  Wapping,  finds 
Mrs.  Johnson,  wlio  keeps  the  house,  and 
her  mot  her  who  had  once  kept  it . 

The  Claimant  walks  in,  orders  a  glass, 
and  talks  about  the  Ortons  and  their 
neighbors,  showing  so  much  mote  knowl- 
edge than  any  stranger  in  the  neighbor- 
hood could  have  possessed,  that  Mrs. 
Fairhead  looked  at  him  more  keenly,  saw 
a  likeness  to  old  George  Orton.  and  said, 
'•  Why.  you  must  be  an  Orton  ?" 

Such  is  the  attraction  of  Wapping  that 
lie  goes  down  there  again  next  day  and 
sees  a  Mrs.  Pardon,  who  also  observes 
his  likeness  to  the  Ortons.  He  passes 
himself  off  not  as  Tichborne,  who  never 
could  be  a  friend  of  <  >i  ton's,  but  as  a  Mr. 
Stephens,  who  might,  if  he  existed,  ex- 
cept as  an  alias. 

He  does  not  attempt  the  Tichborne  lie 
at  Wapping,  any  more  than  the  Castro 
lie  at  Melipilla. 

The  portrait  of  his  own  wife  and  child, 
which  he  gave  as  a  portrait  of  Arthur 
Orton's  wife  and  child,  and  the  other 
curious  details  are  pretty  well  known, 
and  I  have  no  wish  to  go  too  far  into 
debatable  matter.  Take  the  indisput- 
able part  only  of  this  twelfth  coincidence 
and  read  it  with  its  eleven  predecessors. 


READIANA. 


>61 


13.  There  were  remarkable  coincidences 
between  the  spelling-  and  tbe  handwrit- 
ing- of  the  Claimant  and  Arthur  Orton. 
This  is  a  part  of  the  subject  I  cannot 
properly  do  justice  to.  I  can  only  select 
from  the  mass  of  evidence  the  Chief  Jus- 
tice submitted  to  the  jury.  The  Claimant 
writes  the  word  receive  receve,  so  does 
Arthur  Orton ;  also  anythink  and  noth- 
ink  for  anything  and  nothing,  a  mistake 
peculiar  to  the  lower  orders.  They  also 
spell  Elizabeth  Elisaberth.  ''Few  "  they 
spell  fue ;  "whether"  "weather."  The 
pronoun  I  they  both  write  i,  after  the 
manner  of  the  lower  orders.  But  as  this 
is  not  merely  a  coincidence  but  a  vein  of 
coincidences  which  it  would  take  columns 
to  explain,  I  prefer  to  refer  the  candid 
reader  to  the  masterly  dissection  of  hand- 
writing that  took  place  at  the  last  trial, 
and  the  Chief  Justice's  most  careful 
analysis   of   it. 

14.  At  the  first  trial  there  were  heavy 
sums  at  stake,  and  a  wide  belief  in  the 
Claimant,  and  a  romantic  interest  in 
him. 

The  Claimanfs  friends  would  have 
given  hundreds  of  pounds  to  any  sea- 
man who  would  come  into  the  box  and 
prove  he  sailed  in  the  Bella,  on  her  last 
trip.  We  all  know  Jack  tar ;  give  him 
his  month's  pay,  and  he  is  as  ready  to 
sail  to  the  port  of  London  as  to  any  other, 
and  readier  to  sail  to  London  for  £300 
and  his  month's  pay  than  to  any  other 
port  for  his  month's  pay  alone.  Yet  not 
one  of  these  poor  fellows  could  be  got 
alive  to  London,  for  the  first  trial.  Why 
not?  Creation  was  raked  for  witnesses, 
and  with  remarkable  success.  Why  could 
not  one  of  these  seamen  be  raked  for  love 
or  money  into  the  witness-box  of  the 
Common  Pleas  ?  Was  it  because  money  ■ 
will  not  draw  men  from  the  bottom  of 
the  sea,  or  was  it  because  the  trial  was 
in  London,  and  a  large  sum  of  money 
awaited  them  there  for  expenses  ?  Who 
does  not  see,  that,  had  the  trial  been  at 
Melbourne,  these  fabulous  seamen  would 
have  been  heard  of.  not  at  Melbourne, 
but  in  London  or  some  other  port  ten 
thousand  miles  off.  where  they  could 
have    been    talked    about    in    far    away 


Melbourne,  but    never    shown    to  a  Mel- 
bourne jury. 

Well,  the  real  inability,  and  pretended 
unwillingness,  of  those  poor  seamen  to 
come  to  London  and  get  two  or  three 
hundred  pounds  apiece,  is  matched  by 
the  real  inability,  and  fictitious  unwill- 
ingness, of  Arthur  Orton,  to  show  his 
face  in  London  except  in  the  skin  of  the 
Claimant.  The  two  non-appearances 
make  one  coincidence. 

The  Claimant,  who  knows  better  than" 
any  other  man,  declared  Arthur  Orton 
to  be  alive  in  1866;  and  in  Australia; 
and  from  that  time  a  hundred  thousand 
eyes  have  been  looking  for  him  in  the 
Colony,  yet  nobody  can  find  him  there 
alive,  or  get  legal  evidence  of  so  marked 
a  man's  decease. 

At  the  first  trial  seven  or  eight  thou- 
sand pounds  were  waiting  for  him 
just  to  show  his  person  in  the  witness- 
box  in  any  man's  skin  but  the  Claim- 
ant's. 

Yet  he  held  aloof,  and  by  his  absence 
killed  the  Claimant's  case  at  Nisi  Prius. 

At  the  criminal  trial  there  were  still  a 
thousand  pounds  or  two  waiting  for  this 
need}'  butcher. 

Yet  he  never  came  into  the  witness- 
box,  and  his  absence  killed  the  Claim- 
ant's defense. 

Imbeciles  are  now,  after  all  these  years, 
invited  to  believe  he  kept  away  on  both 
occasions  merely  because  he  had  com- 
mitted some  crime  in  Australia.  This 
is  bosh.  There  is  no  warrant  out  against 
Arthur  Orton  in  Australia.  And  if  sus- 
pected of  a  crime  there,  he  was  clearly 
safer  in  England  than  there.  Had  he 
appeared  at  either  trial,  his  evidence 
would  have  been  simply  this.  "I  am 
Arthur  Orton,  son  of  George  Orton  : 
my  brothers  are  so-and-so,  my  sisters 
are  so-and-so.  You  can  confront  them 
with  me." 

Outside  this  straight  line  hostile  coun- 
sel could  not  by  the  rules  of  the  court 
cross-examine  so  narrow  and  inoffensive 
a  deponent  :  or  if  they  did  he  need  not 
answer  them.  No  judge  in  England 
would  fail  to  tell  him  so.  But  the 
truth  is  that  there  was  never  a  counsel 


265 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


against  him,  who  would  have  made  mat- 
ters worse  by  a  wild  cross-examination. 
They  would  have  thrown  up  their  Orton 
case  that  moment,  and  merely  persisted 
that  the  Claimant  was  not  Tichborne. 
Only,  as  they  had  committed  themselves 
to  both  theories,  his  evidence  would  have 
been  death  to  one,  and  sickness  to  the 
other. 

The  Claimant  and  his  counsel  knew  all 
this,  yet  they  made  no  effort  to  show 
Arthur  Orton  to  cither  jury,  though 
there  was  money  enough  to  tempt  him 
into  the  witness-box  a  dozen  times  over. 

The  only  real  difficulty  was  to  show 
him  at  Nisi  Prius  except  in  the  skin  of 
the  plaintiff,  and  to  show  him  at  the 
Central  Criminal  Courl  except  in  the 
skin  of  the  defendant.  Years  have  rolled 
on,  but  that  difficulty  remains  insuper- 
able. Even  now  Arthur  Orton 's  appear- 
ance out  of  the  Claimant's  skin  would 
shake  one  limb  of  the  verdict,  and  also 
create  revulsion  of  feeling  enough  to  re- 
lieve the  Claimant  of  Ins  sc.-oml  term  of 
imprisonment.  Bui  neither  pay,  nor  the 
money  that,  is  still  waiting  for  him,  nor 
the  public  acclamations  that  he  knows 
would  hail  him,  can  drag  Arthur  Orton 
to  light,  except  in  the  skin  of  the  defend- 
ant. And  so  it  will  be  till  sham  Castro- 
sham  Stephens,  sham  Tichborne.  and  real 
Orion  all  die  at  one  and  the  same  mo- 
ment in  the  skin  of  the  Claimant.  After 
all  these  years  and  all  these  reasons  for 
appearing,  no  man — whatever  he  may 
pretend— really  believes  in  his  heart  that 
Arthur  Orton  will  ever  appear  to  us  ex- 
cept in  the  skin  of  the  Claimant. 

15.  I  forgot  to  note  in  its  place  a  re- 
markable coincidence.  After  several  in- 
terviews with  Gibbes  and  some  cor- 
respondence with  Lady  Tichborne.  but 
while  his  knowledge  of  Tichborne  affairs 
was  still  very  confined,  it  was  thought 
advisable  by  his  friends  that  the  Claimant 
should  make  a  statutory  declaration.  He 
made  one  accordingly  in  the  character  of 
Roger  Tichborne,  and  by  this  time  he 
had  learned  the  date  of  Roger's  birth, 
and  landed  him  at  Melbourne.  June  24th, 
1S54.  But.  being  still  ignorant  when 
Roger  sailed  on  his  last  voyage,  viz.,  1st 


March,  1853,  and  in  La  Pauline,  he  de- 
clared as  follows : — 

••  I  left  England  in  the  Jesse  Miller, 
28th  November,  1S52."  Now,  in  point  of 
fact,  Arthur  Orton  sailed — while  Tich- 
borne was  at  Upton — in  the  MiddU  ton  : 
but  he  sailed  28th  November,  1852.  which 
is  a  coincidence  ;  and  the  Jesse  Miller 
is  a  ship  unknown  to  Roger  Tichborne, 
hut  well  known  to  Arthur  Orton.  for  he 
sailed  in  her  from  Valparaiso  in  1851. 

Subsequently,  having  declared  he  was 
picked  up  at  sea  by  the  Osprey,  and  car- 
ried into  Melbourne,  he  was  asked  for  the 
name  of  bis  principal  benefactor,  the  cap- 
tain, and  of  the  other  kind  souls  who  had 
saved  him,  fed  hiin,  etc.,  for  three 
months,  and  earned  his  eternal  grati- 
tude; all  he  could  recall  was  Lewis 
Owen,  or  Owen  Lewis.  Now  Arthur 
Orton's  ship,  the  Middleton,  contained 
two  persons,  one  Lewis  anil  one  Owen. 
So  here  we  find  him  dragging  into  his 
"voyages  imaginaires"  of  Tichborne 
true  particulars  of  two  voyages  by  Ar- 
thur  Orion. 

your  readers,  especially  those  who 
have  paid  me  the  compliment  of  drawing 
the  circle  with  radii  converging  to  one 
center,  caii  now  fill  the  interstices  of 
those  radii,  and  so  possess  a  map  of  the 
fifteen  heterogeneous,  and  independent, 
coincidences  converging  from  different 
quarters  of  the  globe,  and  different  cities, 
towns,  ami  streets,  and  also  from  differ- 
ent departments  of  fact,  material,  moral, 
and  psychological,  toward  one  central 
point,  that  this  man  is  Arthur  Orton. 
Then,  if  you  like,  apply  the  exhaustive 
method,  of  which  Euclid  is  fond  in  his 
earlier  propositions.  Fit  the  fifteen  co- 
incidences on  to  Roger  Tichborne  if  you 
can.  If  this  is  too  impossible,  try  them 
on  Castro  the  Chilian,  or  Stevens,  the 
man  who  dropped  down  on  Wapping 
from  the  sky. 

You  will  conclude  with  Euclid,  "  in  the 
same  way  it  can  be  proved  that  no  other 
person  except  Arthur  Orton  is  the  true 
center  of  this  circle  of  coincidences." 

My  subject  proper  ends  here  ;  but  with 
your  permission  I  will  add  a  short  letter 
correcting  the  false  impression  conveyed 


READIANA. 


263 


to  the  judges  by  defendant's  counsel,  that 
the  famous  Irish  case  of  James  Annesley 
was  a  precedent  favorable  to  the  Claim- 
ant. I  will  also  ask  leave  to  comment 
upon  the  question  whether  the  extreme 
term  of  imprisonment  under  the  Act 
ought  to  be  inflicted,  and  also  that  term 
repeated;  for  false  oaths  sworn  by  the 
same  individual  in  the  course  of  a  single 
litigation. 

I  am, 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 


SUPPLEMENTAL   LETTER. 

Sik — The  ordinary  features  of  a  trial 
are  repeated  ad  infinitum  ;  but  now  and 
then,  say  once  in  a  hundred  remarkable 
trials,  comes  an  intellectual  phenome- 
non— 

There  is  at  the  disposal  of  the  plain- 
tiff's counsel,  or  the  defendant's,  a  friend- 
ly witness,  whose  evidence  to  some  vital 
point  ought  to  carry  far  more  weight,  if 
believed,  than  any  other  person's  evi- 
dence :  yet  that  friendly  witness  is  not 
called.  Let  a  vital  point  of  the  case  be 
matter  of  direct  and  absolute  knowledge 
to  A,  but  only  matter  of  strong  belief  or 
conviction  to  B,  C,  and  D,  A  is  then,  as 
regards  that  vital  matter,  the  principal 
witness,  and  all  B,  C,  and  D,  can  do  is  to 
corroborate  in  a  small  degree  the  higher 
evidence  of  A.  Then,  if  A  is  not  called, 
this  suppression  casts  utter  discredit  upon 
the  inferior  witnesses,  who  are  called,  and 
upon  the  whole  case. 

The  reason  is  obvious  to  all  persons  ac- 
quainted with  litigation. 

Verdicts  are  obtained,  and,  above  all, 
held,  by  the  evidence  alone.  Witnesses 
are  not  allowed  to  go  into  the  box  with- 
out consent  of  counsel.  Counsel  are  con- 
sulted behind  the  scenes  as  to  what  wit- 
nesses are  necessary  to  the  case,  and  may 
be  safely  shown  to  the  jury,  and  trusted 
to  the  ordeal  of  cross-examination.  If 
then  an  able  counsel  withholds  his  prin- 


cipal witness  from  the  jury,  he  throws 
dirt  upon  his  own  case  ;  but  he  is  not  the 
man  to  throw  dirt  upon  bis  own  case  ex- 
cept to  escape  a  greater  evil. 

Now,  what  greater  evil  than  throwing 
dirt  upon  his  case  can  there  be  ? 

Only  one — his  principal  witness  is  al- 
ways the  very  witness  who  may  kill  his 
case  on  the  spot,  either  by  breaking  down 
under  cross-examination,  or  in  some  other 
way,  which  a  wary  counsel  foresees. 

Therefore,  when  either  suitor  through 
his  counsel  does  not  call  his  principal  wit- 
ness, the  case  is  always  rotten.  History 
offers  no  example  to  the  contrary,  and 
only  one  apparent  example,  which  better 
information  corrected. 

In  fact,  whenever  with  evidence  against 
him.  an  able  counsel  dares  not  call  his 
principal  witness,  the  court  might  save 
time  and  verbiage  by  giving  the  verdict 
against  him  without  any  more  palaver. 
Such  a  verdict  would  always  stand. 

You  have  a  correspondent,  who  cannot 
see  the  superiority  of  indisputable  coin- 
cidences, to  "  Jack  swears  that  Jill  says," 
and  even  to  direct  evidence  contradicted 
by  direct  evidence.  I  will  give  this  gen- 
tleman one  more  chance.  Does  he  think 
that  all  judges  are  fools,  ex-officio,  and 
all  jurymen  idiots  by  the  effect  of  the 
sheriff's  summons?  If  not,  let  him  con- 
sult that  vast  experience  of  trials  he  must 
possess,  or  he  would  hardly  have  the  pre- 
sumption to  teach  me  how  to  sift  legal 
evidence,  and  let  him  ask  himself  did  he 
ever  know  a  judge  and  a  jury,  who  went 
with  any  suitor,  that  dared  not  call  his 
principal  witness. 

I  know  one  case,  but  the  verdict  was 
upset.  Does  he  know  a  single  case  ?  I 
doubt  it.  I  will  give  one  example  out  of 
thousands  to  the  contrary,  which  I  had 
from  the  lips  of  a  very  popular  writer, 
beloved  by  all  who  knew  him,  the  late 
Mr.  Lever.  It  was  a  reminiscence  of  his 
youth.  At  some  county  assize  in  Ireland, 
counsel  called  the  sort  of  witnesses  I  have 
defined  above,  as  B,  C,  and  D.  but  did 
not  call  witness  A.  The  judge  was  a 
good  lawyer,  but  not  polished,  having 
been  born  a  peasant ;  but  had  none  the 
less  influence  with  country  juries  for  that, 


261 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


perhaps  rather  more.  He  objected  blunt- 
ly to  this  as  a  waste  of  time,  and  said  the 
jury  would  expect  to  see  witness  A,  and 
the  sooner  the  better. 

"  My  Lord,"  says  the  counsel,  "I  must 
be  permitted  to  conduct  my  case  accord- 
ing to  my  own  judgment." 

The  judge  raised  no  objection  ;  only  in 
return  he  claimed  his  right,  which  was 
to  read  a  newspaper  so  long  as  the  case 
was  so  conducted. 

When  counsel  had  had  their  say,  my 
lord  came  out  of  his  journal,  fixed  his 
eyes  on  the  jury,  and  summed  up.  My 
deceased  friend  gave  me  every  syllable  of 
his  summing  up,  and  here  it  is  : 

The  Shortest  Summing-up  on  Record. 

The  Judge  :  "He  didn't  call  his  prin- 
cipal witness.     Wee-y-Wheet  ! " 

Tins  wee-y-wheet,  hitherto  written 
for  archaeological  reasons  "  Phugh,"  was 
a  long,  plowman's  whistle,  with  which 
my  hud  pointed  his  summing  up.  and  such 
is  the  power  of  judicious  brevity  falling 
on  people  possessed  of  common  sense, 
that  the  jury  delivered  their  verdict  like 
a  shol  againsl  the  ingenious  suitor,  who 
did  not  call  his  principal  witness.  It  was 
in  tins  same  country,  nevertheless,  that. 
on  the  single  occasion  I  have  referred  t<>. 
a  jury  gave  the  verdict  to  the  party  who 
did  not  call  his  principal  witness. 

It  was  the  greal  ease  of  Campbell 
Craig  versus  Richard  Earl  of  Anglesey. 
Craig,  in  this  cause,  was  a  mere  instru- 
ment. James  Annesley,  claiming  the 
lands  and  title  of  Anglesey,  leased  a  farm 
to  Craig.  Anglesey  expelled  Craig. 
Craig  sued  Anglesey  as  lessee  of  James 
Annesley,  and  then  disappeared  from 
the  proceedings.  James  Annesley.  who 
had  thirteen  years  before  been  kidnaped 
by  this  defendant,  and  sent  out  to  the 
colonies,  took  these  indirect  proceedings 
as  the  son  and  heir  of  Lord  and  Lady 
Altham.  to  whose  lands  and  title  had 
succeeded,  first  a  most  respectable  noble- 
man, the  Earl  of  Anglesey,  and,  on  his 
decease,  his  brother,  the  said  Richard 
Annesley,  both  these  succeeding  Lord  Al- 
tham in  turn  by  apparent  default  of  di- 
rect   issue.      James    Anneslev  therefore 


had  only  to  prove  his  legitimacy,  as 
clearly  as  he  proved  this  very  defendant 
had  kidnaped  him  by  force — and  the  es- 
tates were  his. 

Now  both  parties  agreed  that  James 
Annesley  was  the  son  of  Lord  Altham  : 
but  the  defendant  said  James  Annesley's 
mother  was  not  Lady  Altham.  hut  one 
Joan  Landy,  a  servant  in  Lord  Altham's 
house,  who  nursed  him  from  his  birth,  not 
in  Lord  Altham's  house,  but  a  cabin  hard 
by,  where  he  was  admitted  to  have  lived 
with  her  fifteen  months.  There  was  no 
parish  register  to  settle  the  matter,  and 
Lady  Altham,  an  Englishwoman,  driven 
out  of  the  country  many  years  before  by 
her  husband's  hrutality.  had  died  in  En- 
gland, and  never  mentioned  in  England 
that  she  had  a  son  in  Ireland. 

The  plaintiff  called  a  cloud  of  second- 
class  witnesses,  hut  he  could  not  be  got 
to  call  Joan  Landy,  who  had  such  an  ab- 
solute knowledge  whether  the  boy  was 
her  child,  or  her  nursling,  as  nobod3'  else 
could  have. 

Defendant's  counsel.  Prime-Sergeant 
Ma  lone,  one  of  the  greatest  forensic 
reasoners  the  British  Empire  has  pro- 
duced, dwelt  strongly  upon  the  plaintiff's 
conduct  m  not  showing  this  witness  to  the 
jury. 

Here  is  his  general  position — "It  is  a 
rule  thai  every  case  ought  to  be  proved 
lo  the  best  testimony  the  nature  of  the 
thing  will  admit,  and  this  Joan  Landy 
was  the  very  best  witness  that  could  have 
been  produced  on  the  side  of  the  plaintiff." 
He  then  showed  this  without  any  diffi- 
culty, and  afterward  made  rather  an 
extraordinary  and  significant  statement. 
''The  counsel  on  the  other  side  did  very 
early  in  this  case  promise  we  should  see 
tier  :  only,  as  she  was  the  person  that  was 
to  wind  up  the  case,  she  was  to  be  the 
plaintiff's  last  witness,  and  this  was  the 
reason  given  for  not  producing  her  till  the 
trial  was  near  an  end."  He  adds  that 
having  kept  her  out  of  court  on  this  pre- 
tense, they  now  shifted  their  "round  and 
professed  not  to  call  her,  ••because  she 
was  a  weak  woman,  and  might  forget  or 
be  put  off  the  thread  of  her  story." 

This  last  theory  he  exposes  with  that 


READIAXA. 


205 


admirable  logic  I  find  in  all  his  recorded 
speeches,  and  urges  that  the  plaintiff's 
counsel  were  simply  afraid  to  subject 
their  principal  witness  to  the  ordeal  of 
cross-examination.  The  three  judges — 
for  it  was  a  trial  at  Bar — all  ignored  this 
strong  point  for  the  defense,  and  the  jury 
steered  themselves  through  a  mass  of 
contradictory  evidence  by  an  unsafe  in- 
ference— the  defendant  had  kidnaped  the 
boy,  and  therefore  the  defendant,  who 
as  Lord  Althanrs  brother,  must  have 
known  all  about  the  matter,  had  shown 
by  his  actions  that  he  knew  him  to  be 
legitimate. 

James  Annesley  got  the  verdict.  But 
the  soundness  of  Malone's  reasoning  was 
soon  demonstrated.  A  bill  of  exceptions 
was  tendered  and  admitted,  and  pending 
its  discussion,  James  Annesley's  case  was 
upset  in  a  criminal  trial.  His  impetuous 
friends  indicted  Mary  Heath,  a  main  pillar 
of  the  defense,  for  perjury.  She  was  ably 
defended,  and  destroyed  her  accuser.* 
She  brought  home  several  perjuries  to 
some  of  James  Annesley's  witnesses,  and 
to  the  whole  band  of  them  in  one  vital 
matter.  They  had  sworn  in  concert  that 
the  boy  was  christened  on  a  certain  day 
at  Dunmore,  his  godmother  being  Mrs. 
Pigot,  and  one  of  his  godfathers,  Sergeant 
Cuff. 

Well,  Mary  Heath  proved  that  Mrs. 
Pigot  was  nursing  her  husband  with  a 
broken  leg  100  miles  off,  and  showed  by 
the  records  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  that 
Sergeant  Cuff  moved  the  Court  that  very 
day  in  person,  and  in  Dublin,  100  miles 
Irom  Dunmore.  After  this  James  An- 
nesley's case  got  blown  more  and  more. 
The  judges  would  not  act  on  that  verdict, 
and  the  Court  of  Chance^  restrained  him 
from  taking  fresh  proceedings  of  a  similar 
nature  in  the  county  Wexford.  Public 
opinion  turned  dead  against  him.  He 
was  horsewhipped  on  the  Curragh  by 
the  defendant,  and  showed  his  plebeian 
origin,  by  taking  it  like  a  lamb.  Growing 
contempt  drove  him  out  of  Ireland,  and 
he  lived  in  England  upon  his  English  con- 

*  See  The  King  v.  Mary  Heath,  published  in 
pamphlet  form. 


nections,  and  fell  into  distress.  His  last 
public  act  was  to  raise  a  subscription  at 
Richmond.  This  appears  either  in  the 
•'  Annual  Register  "  or  the  "  Gentleman's 
Magazine  "  of  the  day — I  forget  which— 
but  distinctly  remember  reading  it  in  one 
or  other  of  those  repertories. 

His  successful  defendant  outlived  him, 
and  held  the  title  of  Anglesey,  and  the 
Irish  and  English  estates,  till  his  death. 
After  that  he  gave  some  trouble,  because 
he  had  practiced  trigamy  with  such  skill, 
that  the  English  peers  could  not  find  out 
who  was  the  legitimate  heir  to  his  earl- 
dom. The  Irish  peers,  with  the  help  of 
the  logical  Malone,  cracked  the  nut  in 
Ireland,  and  so  saved  the  Irish  titles.  In 
this  discussion  James  Annesley's  preten- 
sions were  referred  to,  but  only  as  an  ex- 
tinct matter  and  a  learning  to  juries 
not  to  go  by  prejudice  against  evi- 
dence. See  the  minutes  of  the  proceed- 
ings before  the  Irish  Lords,  published 
at  Dublin  by  David  Hay,  1773,  p.  19, 
and   elsewhere. 

It  certainly  is  curious  that  both  counsel 
for  the  Claimant  Orton  should  have  been 
ignorant  how  the  famous  case  of  James 
Annesley  terminated,  and  should  have 
cited  it  in  support  of  Orton  ;  curious  that 
both  the  judges  should  have  submitted  to 
so  singular  an  error. 

However,  there  is  a  real  parallel  be- 
tween the  cases,  though  not  what  the 
learned  counsel  imagined.  1st.  James 
Annesley  was  either  an  impostor  or  the 
tool  of  impostors,  and  Arthur  Orton  is  an 
impostor.  2d.  James  Annesley's  counsel 
dared  not  call  his  principal  witnesses — viz., 
the  sisters  of  Arthur  Orton.  Who,  in 
this  world,  could  settle  the  Orton  ques- 
tion with  one-half  the  authority  of  these 
two  ladies? 

It  was  only  to  call  them  and  let  them 
look  at  the  Claimant,  and  swear  he  was 
not  Arthur  Orton — and  stand  cross-ex- 
amination. 

Why  was  this  not  done  ?  Withholding 
them  from  the  jury  threw  dirt  on  all  the 
other  witnesses,  who  could  only  swear  to 
the  best  of  their  belief,  or  offer  reasons, 
not  pure  evidence. 

The  comments  of  Sergeant  Malone  on 


2GC 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


the  absence  of  Joan  Landy  from  the  wit- 
ness-box, Craig  v.  Anglesey,  322,  all 
apply  here;  so  does  the  plowman's 
whistle  of  that  sagacious  judge ;  who 
economized  the  time  of  the  court.  It  is 
not  that  the  value  of  these  ladies'  evidence 
iB  not  known.  They  have  been  got  to 
sign  affidavits  that  the  man  is  not  their 
brother.  Why,  with  this  strong  disposi- 
tion to  serve  him,  could  they  not  be 
trusted  to  the  ordeal  of  an  open  court  ? 
Sergeant  Malone  puts  it  down  to  dread 
of  cross-examination.  There  is,  how- 
ever, another  thing  on  the  cards  which 
naturally  escapes  a  lawyer,  for  their 
minds  are  not  prepared  for  unusual 
tilings. 

Lord  and  Lady  Alt  ham  were  both  wrv 
dark.  James  Aunesley  was  fair.  Now, 
suppose  J«>an  Landy  was  fair,  and  other- 
wise like  i  lie  plaint  ill',  \\  horn  we  now  know 
to  have  been  her  child:'  Annesley's 
counsel  may  have  been  afraid  to  show 
her  to  the  eyes  of  the  jury,  and  her  son 
sitting  in  their  sight,.as  the  evidence  of 
John  Purcell  shows  he  was. 

Old  George  Orion  is  said  to  have 
marked  all  his  children,  including  the 
Claimant,  pretty  strongly.  Supposethese 
two  sisters  are  like  George  Orton,  and  t  he 
Claimant,  sworn  to  be  like  George  Orton, 
is  also  like  these  sisters,  this  would  he  a 
reason  for  showing  the  public  their  hand- 
writing to  a  statement,  and  not  showing 
the  jury  their  faces.  Between  this  and 
the  dread  of  cross-examination  lies  the 
key  to  the  phenomenon. 

He  didn't  call  his  principal  witness. 
Wee-y-Wheet! 

Enough  has  been  said  I  hope,  to  recon- 
cile men  of  sense  to  the  verdicts  of  two 
juries.  The  sentence  is  quite  another 
matter.  I  do  not  approve  it,  and  will 
give  my  reasons  in  a  short  letter,  my  last 
upon  the  whole  subject. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 


THE   RIGHTS  AND  THE  WRONGS 
OF  AUTHORS. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette." 


FIRST  LETTER. 

Sir — Those,  who  do  not  bestow  sym- 
pathy, have  no  right  to  ask  it.  But  if  a 
man  for  years  has  been  quick  to  feel,  and 
zealous  to  relieve,  his  neighbor's  wrongs, 
he  has  earned  a  right  to  expose  his  own 
griefs  and  solicit,  redress.  By  the  same 
rule,  should  a  class,  that  has  openly  felt 
and  tried  to  cure  the  wrongs  of  others, 
be  deeply  wronged  itself,  that  class  has  a 
Strong  claim  to  be  heard.  For  I  he  public 
and  the  State  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  would 
be  ungrateful,  and  also  impolitic;  it 
would  be  a  breach  of  the  mutual  compact. 
that  cements  society,  and  tend  to  dis- 
courage the  public  virtue  of  that  worthy 
class,  and  turn  its   heart's  milk  to  gall. 

Now,  the  class  "  authors"  may  be  said 
to  rain  sympathy.  That  class  has  pro- 
duced the  great  Apostle  of  Sympathy  in 
this  age;  and  many  of  us  writers  follow 
m  his  steps,  though  we  cannot  keep  up 
wlili  Ins  stride.  In  the  last  fifty  years 
legislation  ami  public  opinion  have  purged 
the  nation  of  many  unjust  and  cruel 
things;  but  who  began  the  cure?  In 
most  cases  it  can  be  traced  to  the  writer's 
pen.  and  his  singular  power  and  habit  of 
sympathizing  with  men  whose  hard  case 
is  not  his  own.  Accordingly,  in  France 
and  some  other  countries  this  meritorious 
and  kindly  class  is  profoundly  respected, 
and  its  industry  protected  as  thoroughly 
as  any  other  workman's  industry.  But 
in  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies,  and 
her  great  off-shoot,  the  class  is  personally 
undervalued,  and  its  property'  too  often 
pillaged  as  if  it  was  the  production  of  an 
outlaw  or  a  beaver.  The  notorious  foible 
of  authors  is  disunion  ;  but  our  wrongs 
are  so  bitter,  that  they  have  at  last  driven 
us,  in  spite  of  our  besetting  infirmity,  into 
a  public  league  for  protection,*  and  they 

*  The  Association  to  Protect  the  Rights  of 
Authors,  28  King  Street,  Covent  Garden. 


RE  A  DIANA. 


267 


drive  me  to  your  columns  for  sanctuary. 
I  ask  leave  to  talk  common  sense,  com- 
mon justice,  common  humanity,  plain 
arithmetic,  and  plain  English,  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  about  the  property 
of  authors — a  theme  which  has  hitherto 
been  rendered  unintelligible  to  that  race 
by  bad  English,  technical  phrases,  ro- 
mantic pettifogging,  cant,  equivoques, 
false  summing,  direct  lies,  roundabout 
sentences,  polysyllables,  and  bosh.  Do 
not  fear  that  I  will  abuse  the  public 
patience  with  sentimental  grievances.  I 
have  lived  long  enough  to  see  that  each 
condition  of  life  has  its  drawbacks,  and 
no  class  must  howl  whenever  the  shoe 
pinches,  or  the  world  would  be  a  kennel, 
sadly  sonorous  in  the  minor  key.  I  will 
just  observe,  but  in  a  cheerful  spirit,  that 
in  France  the  sacred  word  "  Academy  " 
means  what  it  meant  of  old — a  lofty  as- 
semblage of  writers  and  thinkers,  with 
whom  princes  are  proud  to  mingle  ;  and 
that  in  England  the  sacred  word  is  taken 
from  writers  and  thinkers,  and  bestowed 
with  jocular  blasphemy  upon  a  company 
of  painters  and  engravers,  most  of  them 
bad  ones  ;  that  the  great  Apostle  of  Sym- 
pathy, when  dead,  is  buried  by  acclama- 
tion in  Westminster  Abbey,  but  is  not 
thought  worthy  of  a  peerage  while  living, 
yet  a  banker  is,  who  can  show  no  title  to 
glory  but  a  lot  of  money  ;  that  what  puny 
honors  a  semi-barbarous'  but  exceeding 
merry  State  bestows  on  the  fine  arts  are 
given  in  direct  ratio  to  their  brainless- 
ness  —  music,  number  one ;  painting, 
number  two;  fiction,  the  king  of  the  fine 
arts,  number  nothing — that  authors  pay 
the  Queen's  taxes  and  the  parochial  rates, 
and  yet  are  compelled  to  pay  a  special 
and  unjust  tax  to  public  libraries,  while 
painters,  on  the  contrary,  are  allowed  to 
tax  the  public  full  fifteen  thousand  pounds 
a  year  for  leave  to  come  into  a  public 
shop,  built  with  public  money,  and  there 
buy  the  painters'  pictures.  All  these  are 
Anglo-Saxon  humors,  that  rouse  the  con- 
tempt of  the  Latin  races,  but  they  cannot 
starve  a  single  author  and  his  family  ;  so 
we  leave  them  to  advancing  civilization, 
political  changes,  and  the  ridicule  of 
Europe. 


But  insecurity  of  property  is  a  curse  no 
class  can  endure,  nor  is  bound  to  endure. 
It  is  a  relic  of  barbarism.  Every  nation 
has  groaned  under  it  at  some  period  ;  but 
while  it  lasted,  it  always  destroyed  hap- 
piness and  goodness.  It  made  fighting 
and  bloodshed  a  habit  and  criminal  re- 
taliation a  form  of  justice.  Insecurity  of 
property  saps  public  and  private  moral- 
ity ;  it  corrupts  alike  the  honest  and  dis- 
honest. It  eggs  on  the  thief,  and  justi- 
fies the  pillaged  proprietor  in  stealing  all 
round,  since  in  him  theft  is  but  retribu- 
tion. Under  this  horrible  curse  there 
still  groans  a  solitary  class  of  honest, 
productive  workmen,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
author,  by  which  word  I  mean  the  writer, 
who  receives  no  wages,  and  therefore  his 
production  becomes  his  property,  and  his 
sole  means  of  subsistence.  To  make  his 
condition  clear  to  plain  men,  1  will  place 
him  in  a  row  with  other  productive  work- 
men and  show  the  difference  : 

1.  His  own  brother,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
writer  for  wages,  is  never  robbed  of  a 
shilling.  He  has  the  good  luck  not  to  be 
protected  by  feeble  statutes,  but  by  the 
law  of  the  land  at  home  and  abroad. 

2.  His  first  cousin,  the  Latino-Celtic 
author,  has  his  property,  made  secure  by 
the  common  law  of  his  nation,  and  effici- 
ent statutes,  criminal  as  well  as  civil. 

3.  The  painter,  the  cabinet-maker,  the 
fisherman,  the  basket-maker,  and  every 
other  Anglo-Saxon  workman,  who  uses  his 
own  or  open  materials,  and  receiving  no 
wages,  acquires  the  production,  has  that 
production  secured  to  him  forever  by  the 
common  law  with  criminal  as  well  as 
civil  remedies. 

Only  the  Anglo-Saxon  author  has  no 
remedy  against  piracy  under  the  criminal 
law,  and  feeble  remedies  by  statute, 
which,  as  I  shall  show,  are  sometimes 
turned  from  feeble  to  null  by  the  misin- 
terpretations of  judges,  hostile  (through 
error)  to  the  spirit  and  intention  of  the 
statute.  The  result  of  this  mess  is  that 
the  British  author's  property  is  pillaged 
at  home  ten  times  oftener  than  any  other 
productive  workman's  property  ;  that  in 
Australia  he  is  constantly  robbed,  though 
his  rights  are  not  as  yet  publicly  disputed ; 


2GS 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


that  in  Canada  he  is  picked  out  as  the 
one  British  subject  to  be  half  outlawed  ; 
and  that  he  is  fully  and  formally  outlawed 
in  the  United  States,  though  the  British 
writer  for  wages  is  not  outlawed  there, 
nor  the  British  mechanical  inventor,  nor 
the  British  printers — these  artisans  are 
paid  for  printing-  in  the  United  States  a 
British  author's  production  —  nor  the 
British  actor  ;  he  delivers  in  New  York 
for  live  times  as  many  dollars  as  his  per- 
formance is  worth  those  lines,  which  the 
British  author  has  created  with  five  times 
his  labor  and  his  skill,  yet  that  author's 
remuneration  is  outlawry. 

Unjust  and  cruel  as  this  is,  the  other 
Anglo-Saxon  authors  are  still  worse  used, 
especially  the  American  author.  He 
suffers  the  same  wrongs  we  do.  and  a 
worse  to  boot.  Our  home  market  is  nol 
seriously  injured  by  American  piracy,  but 
his  home  market,  is.  The  remuneration 
of  the  established  American  author  is 
artificially  lowered  by  the  crushing  com- 
petition of  stolen  goods  ;  and,  as  for  the 
young  American  author,  however  promis- 
ing Ins  genius,  he  is  generally  nipped  in 
the  bud.  I  can  give  the  very  process. 
He  brings  the  publisher  his  manuscript, 
which  represents  months  of  labor  and  of 
debt,  because  all  the  time  a  man  is  writ- 
ing without  wages  the  butcher's  bill  and 
baker's  are  growing  fast  and  high.  His 
manuscript  is  the  work  of  an  able  novice ; 
there  are  some  genuine  observations  of 
American  life  and  manners,  and  some 
sparks  of  true  mental  lire:  but  there  are 
defects  of  workmanship:  the  man  needs 
advice  and  practice.  Well,  under  just 
laws  his  countryman,  the  publisher,  would 
nurse  him  ;  but,  as  things  ai'e,  he  declines 
to  buy,  at  ever  so  cheap  a  rate,  the  work 
of  promise,  because  he  can  obtain  gratis 
works  written  with  a  certain  mechanical 
dexterity  by  hum-drum  but  practiced  En- 
glish writers.  Thus  stale  British  medi- 
ocrity, with  the  help  of  American  piracy, 
drives  rising  American  genius  out  of  the 
book  market.  Now,  as  the  United  States 
are  not  defiled  with  any  other  trade,  art, 
or  business,  in  which  an  American  can  be 
crushed  under  the  competition  of  stolen 
goods,  the  rising  author,  being  an  Ameri- 


can, and  therefore  not  an  idiot,  flings 
American  authorship  to  the  winds,  and 
goes  into  some  other  trade,  where  he  is 
safe  from  foul  play.  At  this  moment 
many  an  American,  who,  under  just  laws, 
would  have  been  a  great  author,  is  a 
second-rate  lawyer,  a  second-rate  farmer. 
or  a  third-rate  parson:  others  overflow 
the  journals,  because  there  they  write, 
not  for  property,  but  wages,  and  so  escape 
from  bad  statute  law  to  the  common  law 
of  England  and  the  United  States.  But 
this  impairs  the  just  balance  of  ephemeral 
and  lasting  literature.  It  creates  an  ex- 
cess of  journalists.  This  appears  by  four 
tests — the  small  remuneration  of  average 
journalists;  the  prodigious  number  of 
native  journals  compared  with  native 
books;  the  too  many  personalities  in  those 
too  many  journals;  and  the  bankruptcy 
of  son  journals  pel-  annum. 

Now  I  am  ashamed  to  say  all  this  in- 
judicious knavery  had  its  root,  in  En- 
gland. It  was  here  the  words  were  firsl 
spoken  and  written  which,  being  thought- 
lessly repeated  by  statesmen,  judges, 
writers  of  law  books,  and  now  and  then 
by  publicists,  have  gradually  deluded  tin' 
mind  and  blunted  the  conscience  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon.  That  gie.it  race  is  inferi- 
or to  none  in  common  sense,  respect  for 
property,  small  ;is  well  :is  great,  and  im- 
partial justice.  To  be  false  to  all  these, 
its  characteristic  and  most  honorable 
traits,  n  must  lie  under  some  strong  de- 
lusions. I  will  enumerate  these,  and 
show  that  they  have  neither  truth,  rea- 
son, common  law,  nor  antiquity  to  sup- 
port them  ;  and  I  hope,  with  God"s  help 
and  the  assistance  of  those  able  men  I 
may  convince,  to  root  them  out  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  mind,  and  so  give  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  conscience  fair  play. 

Charles  Reade. 


SECOND    LETTER. 

Sir — The  four  main  delusions  that  set 
the  public  heart  against  authors'  rights 
are : 


READIANA. 


269 


1.  The  JEtherial  Mania.— That  an 
author  is  a  disembodied  spirit,  and  so  are 
his  wife  and  children.  That  to  refuse  an 
unsalaried  fisherman  an  exclusive  title  to 
the  fish  he  has  labored  for  in  the  public 
sea  would  starve  the  fisherman  and  his 
family;  but  the  same  "course  would  not 
starve  the  unsalaried  author,  his  wife, 
and  his  children.  Those  little  imps  may 
seem  to  cry  for  bread ;  but  they  are 
squeaking-  for  ideas.  The  astherial  mania 
intermits,  like  every  other.  Its  lucid  in- 
tervals coincide  with  the  visits  of  the  rent- 
gatherer,  the  tax-gatherer,  and  the  trades- 
men with  their  bills.  On  these  occasions 
society  admits  that  an  author  is  a  solid, 
and  ought  to  pay  or  smart ;  but  re- 
turns to  asther  when  the  funds  are  to  be 
acquired,  without  which  rent,  taxes,  and 
tradesmen  cannot  be  paid,  nor  life,  far 
less  respectability,  sustained.  No  Anglo- 
Saxon  can  look  the  aetherial  crotchet  in 
the  face  and  not  laugh  at  it.  Yet  so  sub- 
tle and  insidious  is  Prejudice,  that  you 
shall  find  your  Anglo-Saxon  constantly 
arguing  and  acting  as  if  this  nonsense 
was  sense;  and.  pray,  believe  me,  the 
most  dangerous  of  all  our  lies  are  those 
sill3r,  skulking  falsehoods  which  a  man  is 
ashamed  to  state,  yet  lets  them  secretly 
influence  his  mind  and  conduct.  Lord 
Camden,  the  great  enemy  of  authors  in 
the  last  century,  was  an  example.  Com- 
pel him  to  look  the  a3therial  mania  in  the 
face,  and  his  good  sense  would  have  re- 
volted. Yet,  dissect  his  arguments  and 
his  eloquence,  you  will  find  they  are  both 
secretly  founded  on  the  aetherial  mania, 
and  stand  or  fall  with  it. 

2.  An  Historical,  Falsehood. — That 
intellectual  property  is  not  founded  on  the 
moral  sense  of  mankind,  nor  on  the  com- 
mon law  of  England,  but  is  the  creature 
of  modern  statutes,  and  an  arbitrary  in- 
vasion of  British  liberty.  This  falsehood 
is  as  dangerous  as  it  looks  innocent.  It 
crosses  the  Atlantic,  and  blunts  the 
American  conscience  :  and  it  even  vitiates 
the  judicial  mind  at  home.  It  works  thus 
down  at  Westminster.  The  judges  there 
hate  and  despise  Acts  of  Parliament. 
They  make  no  secret  of  it ;  they  sneer  at 
them  openly  on  the  judgment  seat,  filling 


foreigners  with  amazement.  Therefore, 
when  once  they  get  into  their  heads  that 
a  property  exists  only  by  statute,  that 
turns  their  hearts  against  the  property, 
and  they  feel  bound  to  guard  common- 
law  liberties  against  the  arbitrary  restric- 
tions of  that  statute.  Interpreted  in  this 
spirit,  a  statute,  and  the  broad  intention 
of  those  who  framed  it,  can  be  baffled  in 
many  cases,  that  the  Legislature  could 
not  foresee,  of  which  1  shall  give  glaring 
examples. 

3.  That  the  laws  protecting  intellectual 
property  enable  authors  to  make  more 
money  than  they  deserve,  and  that  pirati- 
cal publishers  sell  books,  not  for  love  of 
lucre,  but  of  the  public,  and  for  half  the 
price  of  copyrighted  books.  I  will  anni- 
hilate this- falsehood,  not  by  reasoning, 
but  by  palpable  facts  and  figures. 

4.  The  worst  delusion  of  all  is,  that 
what  authors,  and  the  Legislature,  call 
intellectual  property  is  neither  a  common 
law  property  nor  a  property  created  by 
statute,  but  a  monopoly  created  by  stat- 
ute. 

This  confusion  of  ideas,  unknown  to  our 
ancestors,  and  at  variance  with  the  dis- 
tinctive terms  they  used,  was  first  ad- 
vanced by  Mr.  Justice  Yates  in  the  year 
ITG9.  He  repeated  it  eight  times  in  Mil- 
lar v.  Taylor  ;  and.  indeed,  without  it  his 
whole  argument  falls  to  the  ground.  The 
fallacy  has  never  been  exposed  with  any 
real  mental  power,  and  has  stultified  sen- 
atorial and  legal  minds  by  the  thousand. 
It  was  adopted  and  made  popular  by 
Macaulay  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
February  14,  1841.  He  was  on  a  subject 
that  required  logic  ;  he  substituted  rhet- 
oric, and  said  striking  things.  He  said, 
"  Copyright  is  monopoly,  and  produces  all 
the  effects  the  general  voice  of  mankind 
attributes  to  monopoly."  In  another 
part  of  his  rhetoric  he  defined  copyright 
"a  tax  on  readers  to  give  a  bounty  to 
authors  ;  "  and  this  he  evidently  thought 
monstrous,  the  remuneration  to  producers 
in  general  not  being  an  item  that  falls 
on  the  public  purchaser ;  but,  where  he 
learned  that,  only  God,  who  made  him, 
knows.  In  another  part  he  stigmatized 
copyright  as    '•'«  monopoly  in  books." 


270 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


He  did  not  carry  out  these  conclusions 
honestlj'.  Holding-  them,  it  was  his  duty 
to  advocate  the  extinction  of  intellectual 
property ;  but,  if  his  conclusions  were 
weak,  his  premises  were  deadly.  He 
took  a  poisoned  arrow  out  of  the  custody 
of  a  few  pettifoggers,  and  put  it  into  the 
hands  of  ten  thousand  knaves  and  fools; 
where  the  respected  word  ''property-' 
had  stood  for  ages,  he  and  the  pettifogger 
Yates,  whom  he  echoed,  set  up  the  hated 
word  "  monopoly."  "  Rank  weeds  do 
grow  apace  ;  "  this  fallacy  spread  swiftly 
from  the  Senate  1o  the  Bar,  from  the  Bar 
to  the  Bench.  I  have  with  my  own  ears 
heard  the  Barons  of  the  Exchequer  call 
copyright  a  monopoly  ;  nor  is  the  expres- 
sion confined  to  thai  court  ;  it  is  adopted 
by  writer's  of  law-books,  and  so  infects 
the  minds  of  the  growing  lawyers.  But 
only  consider  the  effect — Here  is  a  prop- 
erty the  uiv.ii  public  never  reads  aboul 
nor  understands,  and  is  therefore  at  the 
mercy  of  its  public  teachers.  It  hears 
fehe  mouthpieces  of  law,  and  the  mouth- 
pieces of  opinion,  declare  from  their  tri- 
bunals that  the  strange,  unintelligible 
properly  called  by  the  inhuman  and  unin- 
telligible name  of  " copyright  "  is  a  mo- 
nopoly. The  public  hasat  last  go1  a  word 
with  a  meaning-.  It  knows  what  monop- 
oly is.  knows  it  too  well.  This  nation 
has  groaned  under  monopolies,  and  still 
smarts  under  their  memory.  It  abhors 
the  very  sound,  and  thinks  that  whoever 
baffles  a  monopoly  sides  with  divine  jus- 
tice and  serves  the  nation.  Therefore  to 
call  an  author's  property  a  monopoly  is 
to  make  1  he  conscience  of  the  pirate  easy, 
and  even  just  men  apathetic  when  an 
author  is  swindled;  it  is  to  prejudice 
both  judges  and  juries,  and  prepare  the 
way  to  false  verdicts  and  disloyal  judg- 
ments. I  pledge  myself  to  prove  it  is 
one  of  the  stupidest  falsehoods  that  mud- 
dleheads  ever  uttered,  and  able  but  un- 
guarded men  ever  repeated.  Ium 
to  prove  this  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  of  all  the  honest 
lawyers  who  have  been  decoyed  into  the 
error,  and  have  delivered  it  as  truth  from 
the  judgment  seat  this  many  a  year.  At 
present  I  will  only  say  that  if  any  states- 


man or  practical  lawyer,  or  compiler  of  law 
books,  who  either  by  word  of  mouth  or  in 
print  has  told  the  public  "  copyright "  is  a 
"  monopoly,''  dares  risk  his  money  on  his 
brains,  I  will  meet  him  on  liberal  terms. 
I  will  bet  him  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
to  fifty  copyright  is  not  a  monopoly,  and 
is  property.  All  I  claim  is  capable  ref- 
erees. Let,  us  say  Lord  Selborne,  Mr. 
Robert  Lowe,  and  Mr.  Fitzjames  Ste- 
phen, if  those  gentlemen  will  consent 
to  act.  I  offer  the  odds,  so  I  think  I 
have  a  right  to  demand  discriminating 
judges.  If  any  gentleman  takes  up  this 
bet  I  will  ask  him  to  do  it  publicly  by 
letter  to  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  we 
will  then  proceed  to  deposit  the  stakes, 
etc.* 

From  all  these  cruel  delusions  I  draw 
one  comfort  :  perhaps  authors  are  not. 
hated  after  all.  but  only  misunderstood  ; 
and,  if  we  can  enlighten  the  mind  of 
Statesmen,  lawyers,  and  I  lie  public,  we 
may  lind  the  general  heart,  as  human  to 
us  as  ours  has  always  been  to  our  fellow 
Citizens,  and  they  don't    deny  it. 

The  t  ho  greal  proper!  ies  of  authors  are 
••  copyright,"  or  t  he  sole  right  of  printing 
and  reprinting  for  sale  the  individual 
work  a  man  has  honestly  created,  and 
••  stage-right,"  or  the  sole  right  of  repre- 
senting the  same  for  money  on  a  public 
stage.  The  men  who  violate  these  rights 
have  for  ages  been  called  pirates.  The 
terms  "copyright"  and  "stage-right" 
are  our  calamities.  They  keep  us  out  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  heart  by  parting  us  from 
its  language.  France  calls  them  both  by 
one  name.  "Ies  droits  d'auteurs ;"  and 
it  is  partly  the  long  use  of  this  human 
phrase  that  has  made  France  so  just  and 
humane  to  authors.  Warned  by  this 
experience,  I  pause  in  alarm  before  these 
repulsive  words,  that  stand  like  a  brist- 
ling  wall  between  us  and  manly  sympa- 
thy; and  I  implore  the  reader  of  these 
letters  to  be  very  intelligent,  to  open  his 
mind  to  evidence  that  under  these  un- 
fortunate and  technical  words  lie  great 
human  realities;  that  both  rights  mean 


*  No  person  has  ever  ventured  to  encounter  Mr. 
Reade.  and  risk  his  money  on  his  opinion  that 
copyright  is  a  monopoly. 


BEADIANA. 


271 


property,  and  that  to  infringe  either  prop- 
erty has  just  the  same  effect  on  an  author 
as  to  rob  his  house  ;  but  to  infringe  them 
habitually  by  defect  of  law  or  judicial 
prejudice  is  far  more  fatal ;  the  burglar 
only  takes  an  author's  superfluities,  but 
the  unchecked  pirate  takes  his  house 
itself,  and,   indeed,  his  livelihood. 

You  take  my  house,  when  you  do  take  the  prop 
That  doth  sustain  my  house  ;  you  take  my  life, 
Wlieu  you  do  take  the  means  whereby  Hive. 

I  do  earnestly  beg  the  reader  then,  iti  the 
name  of  wisdom,  justice,  humanity  and 
Christianity,  not  to  be  baffled  by  a  misera- 
ble husk  where  there  is  really  a  rich  ker- 
nel ;  not  to  let  the  technical  appearance 
of  two  words  divert  him  from  a  serious 
effort  to  comprehend  the  rights  and  the 
wrongs  of  those  men,  living,  whose  in- 
sensible remains  he  worships  when  dead. 
In  face  of  eternal  justice  the  dead  and 
the  living  author  are  one  man  ;  the  dead 
is  an  author  who  was  alive  yesterday, 
the  living  is  an  author  who  will  be  dead 
to-morrow.  In  a  word,  then,  take  away 
or  mutilate  either  of  the  properties  so 
unfortunately  named,  and  you  remove 
the  sole  check  of  piracy ;  but,  piracy 
unchecked,  the  ruin  and  starvation  of 
authors,  and  the  extinction  of  literature 
follow  as  inevitably  as  sunset  follows 
noon.  To  give  the  reader  a  practical 
insight  into  this,  I  will  select  literary 
piracy,  or  infringement  of  copyright, 
and  show  its  actual  working.  The  com- 
position is  the  true  substance  of  a  book  ; 
the  paper,  ink,  and  type  are  only  the 
vehicles.  The  volumes  combine  the  sub- 
stance and  the  vehicles,  and  are  the  joint 
product  of  many  artisans,  and  a  single 
artist,  the  author.  The  artisans,  to  wit, 
the  paper-makers,  compositors,  pressmen, 
and  binders,  are  all  paid,  whether  the 
book  succeeds  or  fails.  To  go  from  the 
constructors  to  the  sellers,  you  find  the 
same  distinction ;  the  retail  bookseller- 
takes  the  enormous  pull  of  25  per  cent  on 
every  copy,  yet  the  failure  of  the  work 
entails  no  loss  on  him — unless  he  over- 
stocks himself — because  he  is  paid  out  of 
the  gross  receipts.  But  the  author  and 
the  publisher  take   their   turn  last,    and 


can  only  be  paid  out  of  profits.  Where 
there  is  a  loss  it  must  all  fall  on  author 
or  publisher,  or  both.  Now,  books  not 
being  so  necessary  to  human  life  as  food 
or  clothing,  publishing  is  a  somewhat 
speculative  trade.  It  is  calculated  that 
out  of.  say,  ten  respectable  books,  about 
half  do  not  pay  their  expenses,  and  of  the 
other  five  four  yield  but  a  moderate  profit 
both  to  author  and  publisher,  but  that 
the  tenth  may  be  a  hit  and  largely  re- 
munerative to  publisher  and  author, 
supposing  those  two  to  share  upon  fair 
terms.  But  here  comes  in  the  pirate. 
That  caitiff  does  not  print  from  manu- 
scripts nor  run  risks.  He  holds  aloof  from 
literary  enterprise  till  comes  the  rare  book 
that  makes  a  hit.  Then  he  and  his  fel- 
lows rush  upon  it,  tear  the  property  limb 
from  jacket,  and  destroy  the  honest 
shareholders'  solitary  chance  of  balancing 
their  losses.  The  pirate  who  reprints  from 
a  proprietor's  type,  and  reaps  gratis  the 
fruit  of  the  publisher's  early  advertise- 
ments, and  does  not  pay  the  author  a 
shilling,  can  alwa.ys  undersell  the  honest 
author  or  the  honest  publisher,  who  pays 
the  author,  and  buys  publicity  by  ad- 
vertising, and  sets  up  type  from  manu- 
script, which  process  costs  more  than 
reprinting.  This  reduces  the  honest 
author's  and  publisher's  business  to  two 
divisions  :  the  unpopular  books — often  the 
most  valuable  to  the  public — by  which 
they  lose  money  or  gain  too  little  to  live 
and  pay  shop,  staff,  etc. ;  and  the  popular 
book,  by  which  they  would  gain  money, 
but  cannot,  because  the  pirates  rush  in 
and  share,  and  undersell,  and  crush  and 
kill.  I  appeal  to  all  the  trades  and  all 
the  arts  if  any  trade,  or  any  art  ever  did 
live,  ever  will  live,  or  can  live,  upon  such 
terms?  The  trade— all  commercial  en- 
terprise requires  capital,  and  all  genuine 
capital  is  timorous  and  flies  from  insecure 
property.  The  art — to  produce  popular 
books  requires,  as  a  rule,  such  intelligence 
and  capacity  for  labor  as  need  not  starve 
for  ever,  but  can  go  in  the  course  of  a 
generation,  and  after  much  individual 
misery,  from  literature  to  some  easier 
profession.  Therefore,  piracy  drives  out 
both  capital  aad   brains,  and  marks  out 


272 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


for  ruin  the  best  literature,  and  would  ex- 
tinguish it  if  not  severely  checked.  This 
is  evident,  but  it  does  not  rest  on  specula- 
tion. History  proves  it.  Piracy  drove 
Goldoni  out  of  Italy,  where  he  was  at  the 
top  of  the  tree,  into  France,  and  maae 
him  end  his  days  a  writer  of  French  pieces 
for  the  one  godlike  nation,  that  treated  a 
pirate  like  any  other  thief,  and  a  foreign 
author  like  a  French  author;  piracy  ex- 
tinguished an  entire  literature  in  Bel- 
gium; piracy,  A.D.  1875.  stifles  a  gigantic 
literature  in  the  United  States  ;  piracy 
for  a  full  century  has  lowered  the  British 
and  American  drama  three  hundred  per 
cent;  A.D.  1694,  the  protection  afforded 
to  copyright  by  the  licensing  Acts  be- 
ing1 removed,  literary  piracy  obtained 
a  firm  footing  in  England  for  a 
time.  What  followed  ?  Tn  a  very  few 
years  a  handful  of  hungry  pirates 
reduced  both  authors  and  res 
ble  publishers  to  ruin,  them,  and  their 
families.  This  was  sworn  and  proved 
before  Queen  Anne's  Parliament,  and 
stands  declared  and  printed  in  their 
Copyright  Act.  A.D.  1700.  Those  col- 
lected examples  of  honesl  artists,  and 
traders,  ruined  by  piracy  are  hidden  for 
a  time  in  the  Record  <  >llice  :  bu1 
are  many  sad  and  public  proofs 
piracy  can  break  an  honest  trader's 
heart,  or  an  honest  workman's.  I  will 
select  two  on  I  of  hundreds.  The  ill-fated 
scholar  we  call  Stephanus  was  not  only 
ruined  but  destroyed,  mind  and  body,  by 
a  piratical  abridgment.  lie  found  the 
Greek  language  without  a  worthy  lexi- 
con. He  spenl  twenty  years  compiling 
one  out  of  the  classical  authors.  It  was 
and  is  a  gigantic  monument  of  industry 
and  learning.  He  printed  it  with  his  own 
press  and  rested  from  his  labors:  lie 
looked  at  his  Colossus  with  honest  pride, 
and  boasted  on  the  title-page,  very  par- 
donably, 

Me  duce  plana  via  est,  qua?  salebrosa  fuit. 

What  was  his  reward  ?  A  man,  who  had 
eaten  his  bread  for  years  as  a  journey- 
man printer,  sat  down,  and  without  any 
real  labor,  research  or  scholarship,  pro- 
duced in  one  volume  an   abridgment  of 


the  great  lexicon.  With  this  the  mis- 
creant undersold  his  victim  and  stopped 
his  sale,  and  ruined  him.  In  his  anguish 
at  being  destroyed  by  his  own  labor 
stolen,  the  great  scholar  and  printer 
went    mad,  and  died  soon  after. 

The  composer  of  our  National  Anthem 
surely  deserved  a  crust  to  keep  body  and 
soul  together.  Well,  piracy  would  not 
let  him  have  one.  His  immortal  melo- 
dies sold  for  thousands  of  pounds,  but  the 
pirates  stole  it  all  and  never  gave  the 
composer  a  farthing.  At  eighty  years  of 
age  he  hanged  himself  in  despair  to  escape 
starvation.  The  old  cling  to  life — good- 
ness knows  why ;  it  is  very  rare  for  a 
man  of  eighty  to  commit  suicide:  but, 
when  an  inventor  sees  brainless  thieves 
rich  by  pillaging  his  brains,  and  is 
gnawed  by  hunger,  as  well  as  the  heart's 
agony  and  injustice  too  bitter  to  bear, 
what  wonder  if  he  curses  God  and  man, 
and  ends  the  intolerable  swindle  how  he 
can.  The  malpractice  which  could  mur- 
der the  composer  of  our  National  An- 
them, has  surely  some  little  claim  to 
national  disgust,  and  the  legal  restraints 
upon  thai  malpractice  to  a  grain  of  sym- 
patby.  Well,  its  only  restraints  upon 
earth  are  not  justice  nor  humanity — it 
mocks  at  these — but  copyright  and  st  age- 
right,  whose  ugly  sound  pray  forgive, 
ami  listen  to  their  curious  history. 

Charles  Reade. 


THIRD  LETTER. 

Sir — The  Greeks  and  Romans  and 
Saxons  had  no  printing-press,  and  no 
theaters  taking  money  at  the  doors.  It 
is  idle  to  search  antiquity,  or  even  medi- 
aeval England,  for  copyright,  or  stage- 
right,  or  my  right  to  my  Cochin  China 
lien  and  every  chick  she  hatches.  "Bona? 
legis  est  ampliare  jura  :  "  common  law, 
old  as  its  roots  are,  has  at  every  period 
of  its  existence  expanded  its  branches, 
because  its  nature  is  the  reverse  of  a  par- 
liamentary   enactment,    and   is  such  as 


READIAXA. 


273 


permits  it  to  apply  old  principles  to  new 
contingencies  ;  to  bloodhounds,  potatoes, 
straw-paper,  the  printing-press,  each  as 
they  rise.  Copyright  and  stage-right, 
and  many  other  recent  rights,  grew  out 
of  two  old  principles  of  common  law ; 
and  these  laid  hold  of  the  printing-press 
and  the  theater  as  soon  as  they  could 
and  how  they  could.  The  first  old 
principle  is  this:  Productive  and  un- 
salaried labor,  if  it  clash  with  no  prop- 
erty, creates  a  property.  All  the  un- 
caught  fish  in  the  sea  belong-  to  the 
public.  Yet  every  caught  fish  comes  to 
hand  private  property,  because  produc- 
tive labor,  when  it  clashes  with  no 
precedent  title,  creates  property  at  com- 
mon law. 

The  second  old  principle  is  this.  Law 
abhors  divestiture,  or  forfeiture  of  prop- 
erty. From  time  immemorial  the  law  of 
England  has  guarded  property  against 
surmises  and  surprises  by  defining  the 
terms  on  which  it  will  permit  divestiture. 
They  are  two — ''consensus  "  and  "delic- 
tum;" that  is  to  say,  "clear  consent" 
and  "'  long  neglect,"  each  to  be  proved 
before  a  jury. 

By  the  first  principle— viz.,  that  pro- 
ductive labor  not  clashing  with  property 
creates  property — a  writer  or  his  pay- 
master acquires  the  sole  right  to  print 
the  new  work  for  sale.  All  lawyers  out 
of  Bedlam  go  thus  far  with  me. 

By  the  second  the  proprietor  acquires 
nothing  at  all ;  he  merely  retains  forever 
that  sole  right  to  print  which  he  has  ac- 
quired by  productive  labor — unless,  in- 
deed, he  divests  himself  by  "  clear  con- 
sent "  or  "long  neglect,"  to  be  proved 
before  a  jury. 

Transfer  to  another  individual  is  "  clear 
consent."  To  leave  a  printed  book  fifty 
years  out  of  print  might  possibly  be 
"delictum,"  or  long  neglect — if  a  jury 
should  so  decide — and  that  would  make 
the  right  common.  But  to  print  and  re- 
print one's  own  creation  is  to  exercise  the 
exclusive  right,  and  exercise  is  the  op- 
posite of  "delictum  :  *'  it  is  the  very 
course  the  common  law  has  prescribed 
from  time  immemorial  to  keep  alive  an 
exclusive  right  when  once  acquired. 


So  much  for  the  governing  principles. 
Now  for  their  operation. 

No  French  nor  Dutch  jurist  disputes 
that  intellectual  property  was  the  prod- 
uct of  his  national  law,  though  after- 
ward regulated  by  statutes ;  and  that 
alone  is  a  reply  to  the  metaphysical 
sophists  who  argue  <?  priori  that  com- 
mon law  could  not  recognize  a  property 
so  subtle.  However,  a  little  fact  is 
worth  a  great  deal  of  sophistical  con- 
jecture. So  let  us  examine  fact,  and 
candidly.  In  England  the  early  history 
of  the  property  has  to  be  read  subject  to 
a  just  caution  :  we  must  assign  no  judi- 
cial authority  to  unconstitutional  tribu- 
nals, but  only  glean  old  facts  from  them, 
and  that  discreetly.  From  the  infancy 
of  printing  till  the  year  1640,  an  English- 
man could  neither  print  his  own  book 
honestly  nor  his  neighbors  dishonestly 
without  a  license  from  the  Crown.  Its 
principal  agent  in  this  iron  rule  was  the 
Star  Chamber,  a  tribunal  whose  deeds 
and  words  are  not  worth  the  milionth  of 
a  straw  judicially.  But,  as  historical 
evidence,  especially  on  any  matter  ir- 
relevant to  its  vices,  its  records  are 
as  valuable  to  a  modern  as  any  other 
ancient  official  memoranda  of  current 
events.  The  original  word  for  "  copy- 
right "  was  "  copy,"  and  the  Star  Cham- 
ber used  this  word  in  very  early  times. 
This  proves  a  bare  fact,  that  copyright 
existed  of  old  in  printed  books,  and  that, 
under  the  Tudor  sovereigns,  it  was  an 
antiquity ;  since  it  had  even  then  lived 
long  enough  to  take  the  technical  name 
"copy,"  whereas  literary  monopolies 
granted  by  the  Crown  were  invariably 
and  with  just  discrimination  called  "pat- 
ents ;"  and  "  stage-right,"  whose  exist- 
ence (in  unprinted  dramas)  by  common 
law,  at  this  time,  is  not  doubted  by  any 
English  lawyer,  had  no  name  at  all,  di- 
rect nor  roundabout. 

The  Stationers'  Company  was  first 
chartered  in  1556.  In  1558  they  enter 
copyrights  under  the  names  of  their  pro- 
prietors, and  the  entries  continue  in  an 
unbroken  series  until  1S75.  In  1582  there 
are  entries  with  this  proviso,  that  the 
Crown  license  to  print  should  be  void,  if 


274 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


it  be  found  that  the  copyright  belonged 
to  another  person.  This  shows  how  En- 
glishmen, when  not  corrupted  by  petti- 
foggers, gravitate  toward  law  and  the 
sanctity  of  property.  The  Stationers' 
Company,  was  chartered  by  the  Crown, 
and  invested  with  some  unconstitutional 
powers  ;  yet  in  a  very  few  years  they 
make  the  royal  license  bow  to  a  pre- 
cedent title  of  proprietorship,  that  could 
in  1582  have  no  foundation  but  in  com- 
mon law. 

In  1640  the  Star  Chamber  was  abol- 
ished, and  for  a  while  everybody  printed 
what  he  liked;  thereupon,  as  free  opin- 
ions differ,  some  wrote  against  the  Par- 
liament. Straight  the  two  Houses  of 
Parliament  took  a  leaf  out  of  the  book 
of  kings,  and  passed  an  ordinance  for- 
bidding any  work  to  be  printed  without 
a  formal  license:  and  then,  as  pirates, 
relieved  of  the  licenser,  had  begun  their 
game,  the  same  ordinance  forbade  print- 
ing without  the  consent   "f  ;1 wner  of 

the  copyright,  on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the 
hooks  to  the  owner  of  the  copyright. 
Thus  the  Commonwealth  in  protecting 
copyright .  went  a  step  beyond  the  mon- 
archial  governments  that  preceded  it: 
which  please  make  a  note  of,  Brother 
Jonathan. 

November,  1644,  Milton  published  his 
famous  defense  of  unlicensed  printing, 
and  attacked  that  portion  of  the  afore- 
said ordinance  which  infringed  common- 
law  Liberties;  but,  he  sanctioned  very 
solemnly  that  portion  which  protected 
common-law  rights.  That  greal  enthu- 
siast for  just  liberty  used  these  words, 
"the  just  retaining  of  each  man  his  sev- 
eral 'copy  '  (copyright),  which  God  for- 
bid should  be  gainsaid." 

Anno  1062.  Act  13  and  14  Charles  II. 
prohibited  printing  any  book  without  con- 
sent of  the  owner,  upon  pain  of  certain 
forfeitures,  half  to  the  king,  half  to  the 
owner.  This  statute  followed  the  word- 
ing of  the  Republican  ordinance.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  in  any  Act  of  Parliament 
'•'owner"  means  the  "  legal  owner,"  not 
the  claimant  of  an  impossible  or  even 
doubtful  right.  Under  this  statute  a 
leading  case  was  tried,  that  might  be  en- 


titled Property  v.  Monopoly.  "Streater" 
held  what  our  ancestors  with  a  scientific 
precision  their  muddle-headed  descend- 
ants have  lost  till  this  day  called  a 
"patent."  He  was  a  law  patentee,  i.e., 
he  had  from  the  Crown  a  sole  right  to 
print  law  reports,  and  that,  Messrs. 
Yates  and  Macaulay,  was  "a  monopoly 
in  books  "  if  you  like.  Streater  reprint. 
ed  Judge  Croke*s  reports.  Roper  sued 
Streater,  proving  his  own  legal  owner- 
ship by  purchase  of  Croke's  copyright 
from  Croke's  executor.  Roper's  1  itle 
was  ai  common  law,  for  the  statute  of 
Charles  II.  never  pretended  to  confer 
ownership;  it  only  protected  the  exist- 
ing legal  owner  by  special  remedies. 
Streater  (Monopoly)  pleaded  the  king's 
grant  :  Roper  (Property)  demurred. 
This  brought  the  question  of  law  be- 
fore the  full  Court  of  Common  Pleas.  It 
was  given  for  the  plaintiff  against  the 
king,  by  judges  who  were  removable  at 

tin'  will  of  the  sovereign,  and  more  in- 
clined to  stretch  a  point  for  him  than 
against  bim.  Opposed  to  a  royal  -rant , 
had  Eloper's  title  at  law  been  doubtful, 
they  would  have  swept  him  out  of  court 
witli  a  besom. 

ssive  licensing  Acts  protected  the 
common-law  owner  of  copyright  until 
1694,  when  the  last  Act  expired;  but  as 
another  was  threatened  for  five  years, 
a  dread  hung  over  piracy.  This  being 
removed  in  1699,  the  pirates  went  to 
work  with  such  fury  that  the  proprietors 
of  cop\  right  began  to  cry  out,  and  in 
1703  pel  itioned  Parliament  for  protection. 
For  six  weary  years  they  besieged  hard 
hearts  and  apathetic  ears.  One  of  the 
petitions  survives,  and  therein  the  peti- 
tioners, though  it  was  their  interest  to 
exaggerate  their  case,  and  say  they  had 
no  remedy  at  law,  do,  on  the  contrary, 
admit  there  is  a  remedy  at  common  law. 
But  they  say  it  is  inadequate — that  in  an 
action  on  the  case,  the  jury  will  give  no 
more  damages  than  can  be  proved,  and 
how  can  a  thousand  piratical  copies  be 
traced  all  over  the  country?  "Besides, 
the  defendant  is  always  a  pauper,"  etc., 
etc.,  cited  from  the  journals  of  the  House. 
In  1709  the  Legislature  took   pity   on 


READIANA. 


275 


authors  and  honest  publishers,  and 
passed  an  Act,  the  words  of  which  and 
their  contemporaneous  interpretation  are 
necessarily  the  last  great  link  in  the  his- 
tory of  copyright,  before  that  creature 
of  the  common  law  became  the  nursling 
of  statutes.  The  preamble  of  a  statute 
is  not  a  law,  but  history  :  it  relates  ante- 
cedent facts,  and  declares  the  cause  and 
motives  of  the  enactment  to  follow.  In- 
stead of  comments  I  put  italics  : 

"Whereas  printers,  booksellers,  and 
others,  have  of  late  frequently  taken  the 
liberty  of  printing,  reprinting-,  and  pub- 
lishing, books  and  other  writings,  with- 
out the  consent  of  the  authors,  or  pro- 
prietors, to  their  very  great  detriment, 
and  too  often  to  the  ruin  of  them  and 
their  families — for  preventing  therefore 
such  practices  for  the  future,  be  it  en- 
acted " — 8th  Anne,  cap.  19,  sec.  1. 

In  the  body  of  the  Act  thus  prefaced, 
the  old  word  "copy"  for  "copyright'' 
is  used  six  times  in  the  sense  it  had  been 
used  for  ages,  and,  so  far  from  inventing 
even  a  new  protection  to  old  copyright,  as 
dreamers  fancy,  the  Act,  in  that  respect 
also,  is  a  servile  imitation  of  the  various 
licensing  Acts.  As  the  Monarchial  li- 
censing Acts,  and  the  Republican  ordi- 
nances, found  oivners  and  proprietors  of 
"copy,"  so  this  Act  finds  proprietors  of 
"copy  "  and,  as  the  Republican  and 
Monarchial  Acts,  protected  the  existing 
owners  or  proprietors  of  "  copy  "  by  con- 
fiscation of  the  piratical  books  so  this 
Act  protects  the  existing  proprietors  of 
"  copy  "  by  confiscation  of  the  piratical 
books ;  and,  to  any  man  with  an,  eye  in 
his  mind,  this  deliberate  imitation  of  pre- 
ceding Acts,  that  had  recognized  "copy- 
light  "  at  common  law,  and  protected  it. 
by  penalties,  is  not  only  a  recognition  of 
the  property,  but  a  recognition  of  the 
recognitions  and  the  penalties.  Dreamers 
always  confound  dates  ;  they  forget  that 
many  of  the  Parliament  men  a.d.  1709 
had  themselves  in  person  passed  a  licens- 
ing- Act.  Even  the  one  apparent  novelty 
— the  curtailing  clause — was  a  bungling 
attempt  to  arrive  in  another  way  at  the 
temporary  feature,  which  was  the  charac- 
teristic of  the  licensing-  Acts.     The  bill, 


we  know,  went  into  Committee  an  Act 
protecting  property  forever  by  penalties. 
In  Committee  it.  encountered  old  mem- 
bers, and  these,  with  a  servile  double  imi- 
tation of  the  licensing  Acts,  which  were 
penal,  and  only  passed  for  a  term,  fixed 
an  imitation  term  to  the  imitation  penal- 
ties, but  so  unskillfully  that,  by  the  gram- 
matical sense  of  their  words,  they  short- 
ened the  days  of  the  sacred  everlasting 
property  itself.  Subject  to  a  saving 
clause,  which  afterward  proved  too  ob- 
scure and  feeble  to  combat  the  spoliation 
clause,  they  fixed  a  term — of  a  book 
already  printed,  twenty-one  years  ;  of  a 
book  to  be  printed,  fourteen  years  :  but 
fourteen  more  should  the  author  survive 
the  first  term. 

Such  to  a  reader  of  this  day,  when  the 
application  of  the  lj'ing-  term  "  monopoly  " 
has  blunted  the  understanding  and  the 
conscience,  is  the  apparent  sense  of  the 
statute.  But  you  must  remember  that 
in  1709  the  word  "monopoly  "  had  never 
been  applied  to  "copyright  "  by  any  hu- 
man creature :  and  so  rooted  was  all 
common-law  property,  and  the  sense  of 
its  inviolability,  in  the  English  mind, 
that  neither  the  laymen  nor  the  lawyers 
of  Queen  Anne's  generation  read  the 
statute  as  curtailing-  the  sacred  property. 
Honest  Englishmen,  not  blinded  by  cant, 
know  no  difference  of  sanctity  in  prop- 
erty. From  a  hovel  to  a  palace  it  is 
equally  sacred.  Curtailment  of  an  En- 
glishman's property  is  spoliation  in  fu- 
turo,  and  spoliation,  without  a  full  equiva- 
lent, is  a  public  felony  Englishmen  were 
slow  to  suspect  the  State  of.  Queen 
Anne's  Parliament  sat  at  Westminster, 
not  Newgate  ;  and  therefore  the  curtail- 
ing clauses  were  interpreted  to  apply  to 
the  new  penalties,  not  to  a  thing-  so  in- 
violable as  the  ancient  property. 

Authors  continued,  after  this  statute, 
to  assign  their  copyright  forever  and 
publishers  to  purchase  them  forever, 
just  as  they  did  before  the  statute;  and. 
for  forty  years  at  least,  while  the  con- 
temporaneous exposition  of  the  statute 
was  still  warm,  equity  judges,  who  had 
conversed  with  members  of  both  Houses 
that  passed  the  Act,  and  with  kucyers 


276 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


who  had  framed  it,  and  had  means  of 
knowing  the  mind  of  Parliament  that  we 
can  never  have,  granted  relief  by  injunc- 
tion to  several  plaintiffs,  who  by  the  lapse 
of  time  had  no  legal  claim  to  any  benefit 
from  the  statute,  but  only  from  the  prece- 
dent common-law  right. 

In  1700— Millar  v.  Taylor— the  judges 
of  the  King's  Bench,  by  a  majority  of 
three  to  one,  decided  that  Queen  Anne's 
statute  had  not  curtailed  the  ancient 
right,  but,  like  its  models,  the  licensing 
Acts,  had  supported  it  by  penalties, 
which  expired  in  a  few  years,  leaving 
the  bare  right  protected  only  by  action 
upon  the  case,  as  it  was  before  the 
statute. 

This  decision  stood  for  live  years.  But 
all  those  five  years  the  lying  word  "  mo- 
nopoly," launched  by  the  dissentient 
judge  in  Millar  v.  Taylor,  was  under- 
mining the  property. 

February  9,  L774,  on  an  appeal  from 
the  Court  of  Chancery  in  Donaldson  v. 
Becl  el .  t  be  House  of  Peers  direct<  d  I  tie 
judges  at  common  law  to  reply  to  three 
questions,  which  may  be  i  bus  com 

1.  Had  an  author  I  he  sole  right  at 
common  law  to  print    his  MS.? 

2.  If  so,  did  he  lose  Ins  exclusive  rigb.1 
by  printing? 

3.  Did  the  statute  of  Queen  Anne  cur- 
tail 1  his  right,  and  confine  it  entirely  to 
the  times  and  other  conditions  spei 

On  the  first  question  i  lie  judges,  includ- 
ing Lord  Mansfield,  were  nine  to  three, 
on  the  second,  eight  t"  four  against  the 
forfeiture,  and  on  the  third,  six  to  six. 

But  Lord  Mansfield,  w  hose  great  learn- 
ing left  little  room  in  his  mind  for  so 
small  a  trait  as  pluck,  withheld  his 
voice,  without  changing  his  mind,  and 
made  the  numbers  appear  to  be — on 
the  first  question  eight  to  three,  on  the 
second  seven  to  four,  on  the  third  six 
to  five.  Pursuing  the  same  delicate 
course  in  the  House  of  Peers  itself,  he 
sacrificed  the  biggest  thing  on  earth — 
and  that  is  justice,  to  an  extremely  pretty, 
but  small,  thing,  etiquette  ;  whereas  Lord 
Camden,  who  for  known  reasons  hated 
authors,  and  hated  Lord  Mansfield,  laid 
aside   not    only    etiquette,    but    judicial 


gravity,  and  ranted  and  canted  without 
disguise,  as  counsel  for  the  pirates,  and 
so  stole  a  majority  (of  lay  lords,  not  law- 
ers),  whose  judgment,  however,  went 
only  to  this,  that  the  statute  had  cur- 
tailed the  everlasting  common-law  right. 
Thus  these  lucky  knaves,  the  pirates, 
got  a  sham  majority  of  the  judges  to 
defy  the  contemporaneous  and  continued 
interpretation  of  a  statute  sixty  years 
old — a  malpractice  without  precedent  in 
our  courts — and — anomaly  upon  anom- 
aly— to  curtail  so  sacred  a  thing  as  an 
Englishman's  property.  Unfortunately 
their  good  luck  did  not  stop  there; 
though  they  were  defeated  upon  the 
first  and  second  questions,  yet  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  muddlehead  now  interprets  their 
bastard  victory  on  the  first  question, 
into  a  victory  on  the  second  question, 
where  they  were  overpowered  by  num- 
bers, and  crushed  by  weight,  Mansfield 
and  Blackstone  being  in  the  majority, 
and  in  the  minority  three  comic  judges, 
K\  re.  Perrol  ami  Adams,  who  held  in  the 
teeth  of  nil  the  eases  that  an  author  has 
not.  by  common  law.  the  sole  right  to 
print  lii.s  oton  manuscript.  Now,  the 
metaphysical  inuddleheads,  led  by  Yates, 
had  the  same  contempt  for  these  three 
comic  judges,  their  allies,  that  Mansfield 
ami  Blackstone  had  for  their  allies  ami 
them.     So  then  the  majority  who  said — 

••No.  copyright    at    c< non    law   is  not 

forfeited  by  its  lawful  exercise,"  for  law 
abhors  forfeiture — were  agreed  in  prin- 
ciple: hut  the  minority  were  only  agreed 
to  say,  "Copyright  in  printed  books  did 
not  exist  at  common  law."  They  could 
not  agree  why.  The  only  principle  the 
metaphysical  judges,  and  the  comic 
judges,  held  in  common,  was  "a  labe- 
Cactation  of  all  principle'" — viz.,  a  resolu- 
tion to  outlaw  authors  per  fas  et  nefas. 
Bub  the  Anglo-Saxon  addlepate.  unable 
to  observe,  and  therefore  unable  to  dis- 
criminate, contemplates,  with  his  moon- 
ing, lack-luster  eye,  a  consistent  major- 
ity, led  by  the  only  judges  Europe  recog- 
nized as  jurists,  and  a  minority,  composed 
of  trumpery  little  obscure  judges  at  war 
with  each  other;  and,  in  the  teeth  of 
this  treble  majority,  by  numbers,  weight, 


READ  I  AN  A. 


277 


and  unanimity,  says  copyright  was  de- 
clared by  the  judges  a  creature  of 
statutes. 

Not  so,  my  friend  and  jackass.  A 
great  majority  of  the  judges,  led  by 
giants,  and  agreeing  in  principle,  over- 
powered a  small  and  discordant  minority 
of  judicial  dwarfs,  and  declared  copyright 
in  printed  books  a  creature  of  the  com- 
mon law,  and  a  nursling  of  statutes. 

Looking  at  the  conduct  of  its  first 
nurse,  in  1709,  the  latter  term  is  doubly 
appropriate  ;  for,  when  a  nurse  is  not  the 
mother,  she  is  the  very  woman  to  overlie 
the  bantling,  and  shorten  its  days. 

Thus  from  1700-1709.  authors  and  their 
assignees  suffered  such  lawless  devasta- 
tion of  their  property  and  undeserved 
ruin  as  no  other  citizens  ever  endured  at 
that  epoch  of  civilization  ;  and  in  1774 
the  same  favorite  victims  of  injustice 
suffered  two  such  wrongs,  judicial  and 
legislatorial,  as  would,  had  they  fallen 
on  any  powerful  class  of  citizens,  have 
drenched  the  land  in  blood,  have  set  the 
outlawed  proprietors  killing  pirates  like 
rats,  and  imperiled  the  House  of  Lords, 
both  as  a  tribunal  and  a  branch  of  the 
legislature.  And  this  is  the  right  way  to 
measure  public  crimes ;  for,  though  it  is 
safer  to  trample  unjustly  on  the  worthy 
and  the  weak  than  on  the  strong,  it  is  not 
a  bit  more  just,  and  it  is  not  so  much 
more  expedient  as  it  looks ;  for  every  dog 
gets  his  day. 

The  judicial  wrong. — The  judges  are 
the  constitutional  interpreters  of  statutes, 
and  their  interpretations  are  law.  Prece- 
dent rules  our  courts  like  iron.  When 
judges,  who  sit  near  the  time  of  an  Act, 
interpret  it  in  open  court  by  judgments, 
and  so  precedents  of  interpretation  ac- 
cumulate, the  chain  of  practical  interpre- 
tations becomes  law,  and  immutable; 
especially  if  the  Act  so  interpreted  came 
after  a  right  at  common  law  and  recog- 
nized it.  Never,  since  England  was  a 
nation,  has  sixty  years*  interpretation  of 
a  statute  been  upset,  except  to  injure  au- 
thors. Sixty  years'  interpretation  of 
Queen  Anne's  statute,  had  the  interpre- 
tation been  injurious  to  authors,  would 
have  stood  as  immovable  as  the  walls  of 


Westminster  Hall.  Not  one  English 
judge  would  have  listened  either  to  rea- 
son, or  to  principle,  or  to  grammar,  or  to 
all  three,  against  a  chain  of  precedents, 
had  those  precedents  been  injurious  to 
authors.  Every  lawyer  knows  this  is  so, 
and  that  the  answer  of  the  judges  to  an 
innovating  author  would  have  been,  "  We 
do  not  make  interpretations  of  old  stat- 
utes ;  we  find  them  in  the  cases.  Have 
you  a  case,  Mr.  Author  ?  " 

The  House  of  Lords  was  not  itself  in 
this  matter.  Besides  the  excess  of  lay 
peers,  there  were  two  elements  that  viti- 
ated its  judgment.  1st.  Lord  Mansfield 
withheld  his  vote.  That  was  monstrous. 
In  the  tribunal  whence  there  is  no  appeal, 
if  the  most  capable  judge  withholds  his 
voice,  the  majority  is  a  delusion.  I  don't 
say  his  silence  was  without  precedent. 
But  the  other  side  flung  precedent  to  the 
winds.  2d.  Lord  Camden,  one  of  the 
judges,  was  corrupt.  A  man  may  be  cor- 
rupted with  other  things  than  bribes. 
This  lawyer  was  corrupted  by  his  pas- 
sions. He  hated  authors  for  blackballing- 
him  at  their  club,  and  he  hated  Lord 
Mansfield  for  being  a  greater  lawyer  than 
himself.  Lord  Mansfield  was  silent,  3-et 
Camden  spoke  at  him  all  through  ;  and 
he  spoke  on  the  judgment  seat,  not  as 
judges  speak  who  are  trying  to  be  just, 
but  as  counsel  play  with  claptrap  on  the 
prejudices  of  a  jury— and  what  were  the 
lay  lords  but  a.  jury  !  He,  who  had  never 
worked  his  brain  for  reputation  only,  but 
also  for  money,  money  for  pleading  causes, 
money  for  doing  justice  on  the  bench, 
pension-money  for  having  judged  cases 
and  been  paid  at  the  time,  he  had  the 
egotism  and  impudence  to  urge  that 
"Glory  is  the  sole  reward  of  authors, 
and  those  who  desire  it  scorn  all  meaner 
views.  Away,  then,"  says  canting  Cam- 
den, "  with  the  illiberal  avarice  that,  at 
sixty  or  seventy  years  of  age,  still  seeks 
a  return  from  books  written  at  thirty  or 
forty.  No,  let  the  aged  author  take  his 
tottering  limbs  and  his  gray  hairs  to  an 
almshouse  or  starvation:  I'm.  all  right: 
I've  got  a  pension."  With  such  justice, 
such  unselfishness,  such  humanity  as  this, 
well  rapt  in  rant  and  omnipotent  cant, 


278 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


he  bribed  Lord  Noodle  and  Lord  Doodle 
— judges  in  virtue  of  their  titles — to  an- 
nul a  chain  of  true  judicial  precedents,  to 
pillage  the  property  of  their  intellectual 
superiors,  and  doom  their  declining'  days 
to  poverty  and  degradation.  Why  not  ? 
The  villainy  could  not  recoil  on  any  one 
of  the  perpetrators  :  the  lay  judges  had 
all  got  land  from  their  sires,  a  property, 
the  title  to  which  is  generally  impure, 
but  it  cannot  be  curtailed,  and  the  pen- 
sioned pettifogger  was  kept  in  affluence 
by  the  State  he  no  longer  worked  for  : 
that  State,  which  does  not  pension  retired 
authors,  and  therefore  was  all  the  more 
bound  tn  secure  to  their  old  age  the  prop- 
erty—  for  creating  which  they  receive 
neither  salaries  nor  pensions — against  pil- 
fering pirates,  metaphysical  muddleheads, 
romantic  pettifoggers,  canting  pension- 
ers, and  all  the  oilier  egotists,  dunces, 
and  knaves,  who,  possessing  the  Lower 
intellect .  hair  the  highest  intellect,  and 
grudge  n  a  long  lease  of  its  own  poor, 
little,  insufficient  freehold,  held  by  ten 
thousand  times  the  puresl  title  law  can 
find  on  sea  or  land — Creation. 

The  legislatorial  wrong. — The  nation 
cried  shame  at  the  judicial  robbery  of  au- 
thors and  their  assigns.  The  House  of 
Commons,  which  is  the  representative  of 
the  country  in  Parliament,  wasted  no 
time,  hut  proceeded  to  cure  the  wrong  by 
fresh  legislation.  Tiny  brought  in  a  bill 
restoring  the  common-law  right  apart 
from  the  Statutory  penalties.  It  was 
carried  by  a  large  majority.  But  in  the 
Upper  House  it  encountered  Lord  Cam- 
den. To  he  sure,  matters  wen'  changed 
now:  justice  and  humanity  no  longer 
asked  him  to  resign  his  new,  hut  gram- 
matical, interpretation  of  an  old  statute. 
They  bowed  to  his  new  interpretation. 
and  merely  asked  him  to  legislate  ac- 
cordingly :  to  rectify  the  unhappy  mis- 
understanding by  a  fairer  and  more 
humane  enactment.  No!  the  cruel  legis- 
lator retained  the  perverse  malignity  of 
the  passionate  judge  :  he  met  all  the  peti- 
tions of  the  sufferers,  and  all  the  assign- 
ments forever  of  literary  property,  that 
had  been  made  in  good  faith,  with  a 
falsehood — that  copyright  is  a  monopoly 


— and  with  the  same  rant  and  cant  he  had 
defiled  the  judgment-seat  with  in  Donald- 
son v.  Becket.  He  wrought  upon  the 
passions  and  the  illiterate  prejudices  of  a 
House  which  was  not  the  enlightened 
assembly  it  is  now  ;  justice  in  the  person 
of  Lord  Mansfield  once  more  sat  mum- 
chance,  apathetic,  cowardly,  dumb,  de- 
spising secretly  the  romantic  injustice, 
the  pseudo-metaphysical  idiocy,  the  rant 
and  cant,  and  misplaced  malevolence,  he 
should  have  got  up  and  throttled,  like  a 
man:  unfortunate  authors! — the  foibles 
of  your  friends,  the  vices  of  your  enemies, 
all  tended  l>y  some  gravitation  of  injustice 
to  weigh  down  the  habitual  victims  ;  and 
so  a  small  majority  of  the  peers  was  got 
to    overpower  a   large   majority   of  the 

< ' urns,  and  the  sense  and  humanity  of 

the  nation. 

Upon  this,  authors  and  honest  pub- 
lishers fell  into  deep  dejection,  and  re- 
signed all  hope  of  justice  during  their 
enemy's  lifetime.  After  his  death  the 
House  of  Peers  became  more  human; 
t  hey  seemed  t  o  admit .  with  tardy  regret, 
that     Lord    Camden    had    misled    them,   a 

little.;  that  an  author,  after  all,  was  not 

an  old  wild  beast,  but  an  old  man:  and 
so  t  hey  gave  him  hack  his  stolen  property 
for  his  whole  life,  and  for  twenty-eight 
years  al    least  . 

That  remorse  did  not  decline,  but  grew 
as  civilization  advanced.  In  1842,  Parlia- 
ment .  advised  by  lawyers  worthy  of  the 
name,  passed  a  nobler  bill.  They  gave 
the  lie  direct  to  Mr.  Justice  Yates  and 
Lord  Camden,  by  formally  declaring  copy- 
right to  be  property  (Act  5  and  6  Vic- 
toria, cap.  45,  sect.  25),  anil  they  post- 
poned the  statutory  dissolution  of  this 
sacred  and  declared  property  for  forty- 
two  years  at  least,  and  seven  years  after 
the  author"s  death. 

But  for  Macaulay\s  rhetoric,  and  his 
popular  cry  "  Monopoly,''  Parliament 
would  have  refunded  us  our  property  for 
sixty  years  :  and  that  may  come  as  civil- 
ization and  sound  views  of  law  advance. 
For.  in  this  more  enlightened  century, 
the  progress  of  intellectual  property 
keeps  step  with  advancing  civilization 
and  sound  views  of  trade.     Accordingly 


READIANA. 


a?9 


in  183S,  there  was  a  faint  attempt  at  in- 
ternational justice  to  authors,  and  in  1851, 
other  nations  began  really  to  comprehend 
what  France,  the  leading  nation  in  this 
morality,  had  always  seen,  that  the 
nationality  of  an  author  does  not  affect 
his  moral  claim  to  a  property  in  his  com- 
position. But  that  question  includes  in- 
ternational stage-right,  and  must  follow 
its  legal  history ;  which,  however,  will 
not  detain  us  long  from  the  main  topic  of 
these  letters. 

Charles  Reade. 


FOURTH  LETTER. 

Sir — Stage-right  is  a  term  invented  \)y 
me,  and  first  printed  in  a  book  called 
"The  Eighth  Commandment."  The 
judges  of  the  Common  Pleas  accepted  it 
from  me  when  I  argued  in  person  the 
question  of  law,  that  arose  out  of  the  first 
count  in  Reade  v.  Conquest.  The  term 
was  necessary.  Truth  and  legal  science 
had  not  a  fair  chance,  so  long  as  the  fal- 
lacious phrase  '•'Dramatic  Copyright" 
infested  the  courts  and  the  books  :  its 
use,  by  counsel  and  judges,  had  created 
many  misunderstandings,  and  one  judicial 
error,  Cumberland  v.  Planche.  Lan- 
guage has  its  laws,  which  even  the 
learned  cannot  violate  with  impunity : 
adjectives  can  qualify  a  substantive,  but 
cannot  change  its  substance;  "Dra- 
matic Copyright  "  either  means  the  ex- 
clusive right  of  printing  a  play  book,  or 
means  nothing :  but,  since  the  word 
"  Copyright  "  covers  the  exclusive  right 
of  printing  a  play  book,  "  Dramatic  Copy- 
right "  does  really  mean  nothing.  It  is 
an  illogical,  pernicious  phrase,  and,  if  any 
lawyer  will  just  substitute  the  word 
"  Stage-right,"  he  will  be  amazed  at  the 
flood  of  light  the  mere  use  of  a  scientific 
word  will  pour  upon  the  fog,  that  at 
present  envelops  history  and  old  decisions, 
especially  Coleman  v.  Wathen,  Murray 
v.  Elliston,  and  Morris  v.  Kelly,  leading 
cases. 


Stage-right,  or  the  sole  right  of  an  au- 
thor to  produce  and  reproduce  his  im- 
printed dramas  on  the  stage,  is  allowed 
by  lawyers  to  have  been  a  common-law 
right  up  to  the  date  of  3  Will.  IV.  This 
admission  shortens  discussion.  Hens- 
lowe's  Theater  was  exceptional:  in  his 
days  and  Shakespeare's,  most  theaters 
were  managed  thus :  established  actors 
were  the  shareholders,  and  obtained  plays 
on  various  terms;  if  an  author  was  a 
member  of  the  sharing  company,  he  was 
paid  by  his  share  of  the  profits.  The  non- 
sharing  author  received  a  sum,  or  the 
overplus  of  a  certain  night,  or  both.  The 
stage-right  of  an  author  vested  in  the 
company  upon  the  common-law  principle, 
that  the  paymaster  of  a  production  is  its 
proprietor.  To  this  severe  equity  we  owe 
a  literary  misfortune;  several  hundred 
plays,  many  of  them  masterpieces,  were 
kept  out  of  print,  and  have  been  lost. 
The  plays  of  Jonson,  Fletcher,  Shakes- 
peare, and  others,  were  confined  to  the 
theater  until  well  worn.  Messrs.  Pope, 
Warburton,  and  Jonson,  had  not  the  key 
to  Shakespeare's  business,  and  wrote 
wildly— that  he  neglected  his  reputation, 
did  not  think  his  works  worth  printing, 
and,  thanks  to  his  flightiness,  his  lines 
come  down  to  us  more  corrupt  than  the 
text  of  Velleius  Paterculus  :  but  the  t  ruth 
is,  other  plays  were  kept  out  of  print  as 
long  as  his  were,  and  his  text  is  by  no 
means  the  only  corrupt  one  of  that  clay  ; 
and  what  those  fine  fellows  call  his  flighti- 
ness was  good  sense  and  probity.  He 
valued  reputation,  as  all  writers  do.  But 
he  valued  it  at  its  value.  The  man  wrote 
poems  as  well  as  plays,  and  did  the  best 
thing  possible  with  both  :  of  a  poem  the 
road  to  a  little  fame  and  profit  was  the 
printing  press ;  of  a  play  the  way  to 
great  fame  and  profit  was  the  theater ; 
readers  were  very  few,  playgoers  numer- 
ous beyond  belief ;  observe,  then,  his  good 
sense — he  prints  his  poems  in  1594,  al- 
most as  soon  as  he  can  afford  to  do  it  :  of 
his  plays  he  prints  a  few,  one  at  a  time, 
and  never  till  each  play  has  been  well 
worn  in  the  theater.  Observe  his  prob- 
it\' ;  he  was  a  sharing  author,  and  his  fel- 
low shareholders  had  an  equitable  lien  on 


•230 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


his  plays.  To  gratify  his  vanity  by  whole- 
sale publication  of  his  plays  would  have 
been  unfair  to  them.  This  is  connected 
with  my  subject  thus  :  In  his  will,  par- 
ticular as  it  is,  he  did  not  bequeath  his 
plays  to  any  one.  Therefore,  prima  facie 
they  would  go  to  his  residuary  legatee. 
But  they  did  not  go  to  her.  Created  by 
a  shareholder  in  the  Globe,  and  hand- 
somely paid  for  year  by  year,  they  re- 
mained, by  current  equity,  tin'  property 
of  the  theater.  The  shareholders  kept 
them  to  the  boards  for  seven  years  after 
his  death,  and  then  printed  them.  His 
first  editors.  Hemming  and  Condell.  had 
been  his  joint  shareholders  m  the  Globe. 
Now  observe  how  the  men  of  thai  day 
commented  by  anticipation  on  the  roman- 
tic canl  of  recent  pettifoggers,  thai  cent- 
uries ago  if  any  one  printed  a  Ms.,  he 
resigned  all  the  rights  he  held  while  it 
was  in  Ms.  !  The  copyright  in  Shakes- 
peare's plays — it  was  not  violated  at  all. 
The  stage-righl  -it  was  not  violated  for 
some  years  alter  the  plays  were  printed  ; 
but,  as  printing  and  publishing  plays 
facilitate  dramatic  piracy,  though  they 
do  not  make  it  honest,  some  companies 
plucked  up  courage  in  1627,  and  began  to 
perform  Shakespeare's  dramas  from  the 
printed  book.  Then  tin;  holders  of  the 
stage-righl  went  to  the  licenser  of  plays, 
and  he  stopped  the  company  of  the  Red 
Bull  Theater  in  that  act  of  piracy.  See 
"Collier's  Annals  of  the  Stage,"  vol.  ii., 
p.  8.  The  Chamberlain's  decision,  in  this 
matter,  is  of  no  legal  value  :  but  it  shows 
historically  that  the  moral  sense  and 
equity,  which  in  the  present  day  govern 
stage-right  and  copyright,  were  not  in- 
vented by  recent  Parliaments:  and  the 
proof  is  accumulative,  for  ten  years  hit  it 
— namely,  in  1637 — another  Chamberlain 
is  found  acting  on  the  same  equity,  and 
in  terms  worth  noting.  On  application 
from  the  shareholders  of  the  Cockpit 
in  Drury  Lane,  the  Chamberlain  gave 
solemn  notice  to  other  companies  not  to 
represent  certain  plays,  twenty-four  in 
number,  which  "  did  all  and  every  of 
them  properly,  and  of  right,  belong  to 
that  company."  and  he  "requires  all 
masters  and    governors    of    playhouses, 


and  all  others  whom  it  concerns,  to  take 
notice  and  forbear  to  impeach  the  said 
William  Bieston  (who  represented  the 
shareholders  of  the  Cockpit)  in  the  prem- 
ises." Of  these  twenty-four  plays  some 
were  in  MS.,  and  some  printed.  The  no- 
tice is  worded  by  a  lawyer,  and  the  de- 
clared object  is  to  protect  property. 
Malone  in  Prolegomena  to  Shakespeare, 
vol.  hi.,  p.  15S. 

Soon  after  this  the  theaters  were  closed ; 
and  t  hat  made  the  readers  of  plays  a  hun- 
dred, where  one  had  been,  and  deranged 
forever  the  equitable  custom  that  pre- 
vailed before  the  Civil  War.  As  soon  as 
the  theater  reopened,  dramatists  made 
other  and  better  terms,  and  those  terms 
were  uniform:  they  never  sold  their 
manuscripts  out  and  out  to  the  theater ; 
from  1662  to  1694  they  divided  their  stage- 
righl  from  then-  copyright;  they  took 
from  the  t  heater  the  overplus  of  the  third 
Dighl  generally  at  double  prices,  and  they 
always  sold  the  copyrighl  to  the  book- 
sellers. Testibus  Downes,  Pepys,  Malone, 
(  'oilier,  and  many  o1  hers. 

The  following  figures  can  be  relied  on: 
Stage-righl — In  1694  Southerne  obtained 
another  night,  the  sixth.  In  1705  Far- 
quhar  obtained  a  third  night,  the  ninth, 
and  authors  held  these  three  nights  about 
a  century.  Dryden,  under  the  one-night 
system,  used  to  receive  for  stage-right 
about  £100.  and  for  copyrighl  £20— £25. 
But  his  plays  were  not  very  popular. 
Southerne.  for  "The  Fatal  Marriage," 
A.D.  1694,  stage-right  two  nights'  over- 
plus. £260,  copyright  £3G.  Rowe's  "Jane 
Shore,"  stage-right  three  nights,  copy- 
right £50  15s.  Rowe:s  "Jane  Grey," 
stage-right  three  nights,  copyright  £75. 
Southerne's  "  Spartan  Dame,"  stage-right 
not  known,  copyright  £120,  a.d.  1719. 
Cibber's  "Non-Juror"  and  Smythe's, 
".Rival  Modes."  stage-right  three  nights 
each,  copyright  a  hundred  guineas  apiece 
from  Bookseller  Lintot.  Fenton's  "  Mari- 
anne." sta.ire-risht  and  copyright,  total 
£1,000,  a.d.  1723.  "George  Barnwell." 
by  Lillo,  stage-right  the  overplus  of  three 
nights,  copyright  £105.  This  copyright 
Lillo  assigned  to  Bookseller  Gray  and  his 
heirs  forever,  on  the  25th  of  November, 


RE A  DIANA. 


281 


1735.  The  assignment  is  to  be  seen  to 
this  day,  printed  in  full,  in  the  edition  of 
1810.  Dr.  Young's  "Busiris,"  stage- 
right  three  nights,  copyright  £84.  Lintot. 
Copyright  alone  of  Addison's  "  Drummer" 
(failed  at  the  time  on  stage),  £50.  Dr. 
Young's  ''Revenge,''  stage-right  large, 
copyright  £50.  "  Beggar's  Opera,  " 
stage-right  £1,600,  copyright  £400. 
"Polly,"  by  the  same  author,  rep- 
resentation stopped  by  the  Chamber- 
lain, copyright  £1,200.  This  proves  little  ; 
it  was  published  by  subscription.  "  The 
Brothers,"  by  Dr.  Young,  stage-right 
and  copyright  £1,000,  the  proportions  not 
ascertained.  "The  Follies  of  a  Day," 
by  Holcroft,  stage-right  £600,  copyright 
£300.  "  Road  to  Ruin,"  stage-right  £900, 
copyright  £400.  Goldsmith's  "  Good- 
natured  Man,"  stage-right  £300,  copy- 
right £200.  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer," 
stage-right  £500,  copyright  £300. 

Now  the  other  branch  of  fiction  had  but 
one  market,  copyright :  yet  the  copyright 
of  a  story  in  prose  or  verse  was  less  valu- 
able than  the  copyright  of  a  play.  Mil- 
ton's "  Paradise  Lost  "  was  sold  in  1657 
for  £5  per  edition,  which  was  rather  less 
than  the  copyright  of  a  play  in  1662,  and 
80  per  cent'  less  than  the  stage-right. 
Defoe  did  not  receive  £105  for  "  Robinson 
Crusoe."  Pope's  "Rape  of  the  Lock," 
first  edition,  £7.  Second  edition.  £15. 
Dr.  Johnson's  "  Irene,"  a  very  bad  play, 
brought  him  £315.  "  Rasselas,"  an  ex- 
quisite tale,  only  £100;  and  his  true  nar- 
ratives, and  best  work,  "  The  Lives  of  the 
Poets,"  only  £200.  Goldsmith's  "  Vicar 
of  Wakefield,"  only  £60,  which  compare 
with  the  copyrights  of  Goldsmith's  plays  ; 
that  were  nevertheless  less  remunerative 
than  his  stage-rights.  Of  the  two  prop- 
erties in  a  play,  both  so  largely  remuner- 
ated, neither  could  have  been  an  empty 
sound  ;  book-copyright,  far  less  valuable, 
was,  we  know,  secure;  nor  is  it  creditable 
that  the  stage-right  was  legally  dissolved, 
if  the  author  went  into  print  :  otherwise, 
the  managers  would  have  objected  to  the 
dramatist  going  into  print,  and  the  man- 
agers were  clearly  masters  of  the  situa- 
tion. 

Macklin   v.   Richardson  —  a.  d.    1770. 


Mack! in,  author  of  a  MS.  farce,  used  to 
play  it,  but  never  printed.  Richardson 
took  it  down  shorthand  from  .the  actor's 
lips,  and  printed  it.  Macklin  filed  an  in- 
junction. Defendant  tried  the  reasoning 
of  Mr.  Justice  Yates :  "  Plaintiff  had 
flown  his  bird  ;  had  given  his  ideas  to  the 
public,  and  no  member  of  the  public  could 
be  restrained  from  doing'  what  he  liked 
with  them."  This  piece  of  thieves'  cant 
failed,  and  the  injunction  was  made  per- 
petual. This  is  a  pure  copyright  case; 
stage-right  never  entered  the  discussion. 
Coleman  v.  Wathen,  and  Murray  v.  Ellis- 
ton,  were  neither  copyright,  nor  stage- 
right,  but  bastard,  cases,  where  the  wrong 
plaintiff  came  into  court.  They  arose  out 
of  an  imperfect  vocabulary.  "  Words  are 
the  counters  of  wise  men,  but  the  money 
of  fools,"  says  Lord  Bacon  :  the  sole 
right  of  printing  being  represented  by  a 
good  hard  substantive,  any  mind  could 
realize  that  right,  but  the  sole  right 
of  representation  not  being  represented 
by  a  substantive,  the  soft  heads  of 
little  lawyers  could  not  realize  its  distinct 
existence  and  heterogeneous  character. 
One  has  only  to  supply  the  substantive, 
stage-right,  and  the  fog  flies. 

Coleman  v.  Wathen. — O'Keefe  wrote  a 
plajr ;  by  this  act  he  created  two  proper- 
ties assignable  to  distinct  traders — a  com- 
mon-law right,  stage-right ;  and  a  statu- 
tory right,  copyright.  He  assigned  the 
copyright  to  Coleman  in  terms  that  could 
not  possibly  convey  the  stage-right. 
Wathen  played  the  play  piratically  at 
Richmond.  This  was  an  infraction  of 
O'Keefe's  stage-right,  but  not  of  Cole- 
man's copyright  :  yet  bad  legal  advisers 
sent  not  O'Keefe,  but  Coleman,  into  court 
as  plaintiff. 

Murray  v.  Eliiston.  The  same  error. 
Lord  Byron,  by  writing  "  Sardanapalus," 
created  stage-right  at  common -law,  and 
copyright  by  statute.  He  assigned  the 
copyright  to  Murray.  He  could  have 
assigned  the  stage-right  to  Morris.  By 
not  assigning  it  to  anybody  he  retained 
it.  "  Expressum  facit  cessare  taciturn." 
Eliiston  played  "  Sardanapalus."  If  Mur- 
ray had  been  well  advised,  he  would  have 
sent  off  a  courier  to  Lord  Byron,  and  ob- 


282 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


tained  an  assignment  of  the  common-law 
right  of  representation.  Instead  of  that, 
this  assignee  of  the  copyright  went  to 
Eldon,  and  asked  him  to  restrain  a  piracy 
upon  the  author's  stage-right,  which  was 
actually  at  that  moment  the  author's 
property  and  not  Murray's.  Xow  it  is 
sworn  in  the  Blue-book  of  1832  that  Lord 
Eldon  never  refused  an  injunction  to  a 
manager,  who  had  purchased  a  stage- 
right.  But  of  course  when  not  a  man- 
ager, but  a  publisher,  the  assignee  of  a 
statutory  copyright,  came  to  him  to  re- 
strain an  infringement  of  common-law 
stage-right,  he  declined  to  interfere,  and 
sent  the  plaintiff  to  Westminster.  The 
judges  decided  against  this  plaintiff,  bul 
did  not  give  their  reasons.  That  is  very 
unusual;  but  how  could  they  give  their 
reasons?  The  poor  dear  souls  had  nut 
got  the  words  to  explain  with.  Existing 
language  was  a  mere  trap.  They  had 
go<  one  word  for  two  distinct  properties: 
so  they  very  wisely  avoided  their  vehicle 
of  confusion,  language,  and  acted  the  jusl 
distinction  they  could  not  speak  for  want 
of  a  substantive.  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  thai  they  would  have  denied  the 
title  of  a  theatrical  manager  armed  with 
an  assignment  of  the  stage-righl  in  "Sar- 
danapalus."  There  was  a  side  question 
of  abridgment  in  Murray  v.  Elliston,  bui 
that  was  for  a  jury.  The  judges  had 
nothing  to  do  with  that  :  what  they  de- 
nied was  Murray's  right  to  bring  an  ac- 
tion; and  they  were  right.:  he  was  no 
more  the  plaintiff  than  my  grandmother 
was. 

Harris  v.  Kelly.  —  This  is  the  only 
stage-right  case  in  the  books.  Mi.rn>. 
manager  of  the  Haymarket  Theater,  was 
not  a  dealer  in  copyrights,  but  stage- 
rights.  He  produced,  not  an  assignment 
of  O'Keefe's  copyright,  as  Coleman  had 
done,  but  good  prima  facie  evidence  that 
he  had  purchased  O'Keefe's  stage-right. 
The  very  same  judge,  who  declined  to 
assist  the  assignee  of  Byron's  copyright 
in  a  case  of  piratical  representation, 
granted  an  injunction  with  downright 
alacrity  when  the  assignee  of  O'Keefe's 
stage-right  stood  before  him.  The  play, 
whose  performance  was  thus  restrained, 


had  been  in  print  ever  so  long.  There- 
fore, the  theory  that  under  the  common 
law  stage-right  exists  in  a  MS.,  but  expires 
if  the  play  is  printed,  received  no  counte- 
nance from  that  learned  and  wary  judge, 
Lord  Eldon.  I  knew  the  plaintiff,  Mor- 
ris :  he  was  a  most  respectable  man  ;  he 
has  sworn  before  Parliament  that  Lord 
Eldon  constantly  granted  injunctions  in 
support  of  a  manager's  stage -right. 
Morris's  evidence  is  incidentally  con- 
firmed by  "  Godson  on  Patents  :  "  he 
mentions  an  injunction,  Morris  v.  Har- 
ris, which  is  not  reported. 

The  sworn  deposition  of  Morris,  and 
the  support  given  to  it  by  the  two  re- 
corded cases,  Morris  v.  Kelly,  and  the 
unreported  case  mentioned  by  Godson, 
would  be  meager  evidence,  if  opposed  ; 
but  there  is  nothing  at  all  to  set  against 
that  evidence — not  a  case,  not  a  dictum; 
ami  it  accords  with  the  prices  of  plays, 
play-books,  and  story-books  in  prose  and 
verse,  for  150  j-ears,  1657 — 1810.  Stage- 
right,  therefore,  in  unprinted  plays  was, 
by  admission,  a  creature  of  the  common 
law  and  the  natural  product  of  common 
justice:  the  immense  publicity  given  to 
the  author's  ideas  by  representation  did 
not  justify  the  public  in  carrying  away 
the  words  to  represent  them  in  another 
theater.  Printings  play  would  greatly 
facilitate  piracy:  bu1  the  powerto  misap- 
propriate i>  oot  the  right,  to  misappro- 
priate. That  printing  a  play  could  actu- 
ally forfeit  so  heterogeneous  a  property  as 
stage-right  is  a  conjecture.  What  little 
evidence  there  is  runs  against  the  forfeit- 
ure. Up  to  the  Commonwealth,  the  Cham- 
berlain, alleging  property,  stopped  viola- 
tion of  stage-right  in  plays,  whether  they 
were  printed  or  not.  After  the  Restora- 
tion we  have  only  the  evidence  of  prices 
for  150  years,  ami  Lord  Eldon 's  judgment. 
He  protected  stage-right  after  publica- 
tion, and  his  is  the  only  judicial  decision 
that  touches  stage-right  at  common-law, 
either  in  MSS.  or  play -books. 

If,  therefore,  we  are  to  go  by  impartial 
principles  of  law  and  the  best  direct  evi- 
dence we  can  get,  and  superior  weight  of 
judicial  authority,  speaking  obiter  in 
Donaldson    v.   Becket,    and    ad    rem    in 


RE  AD  I  AN  A. 


283 


Morris  v.  Kelly,  stage  -  right  in  MSS., 
and  even  in  printed  plays,  was  like  copy- 
right, a  creature  of  common  sense,  com- 
mon justice,  and  common  law  ;  but,  like 
copyright,  is  now  a  nursling  of  statutes, 
thanks  to  a  sudden  onslaught  by  pirates. 
For,  if  law  be  ever  so  clear,  but  carry  no 
penalty  for  breach,  property  is  the  sport 
of  accident ;  so,  on  the  close  of  the  war 
in  1815,  monopoly  and  piracy  fell  upon 
the  dramatist,  and  destroyed  him.  Two 
theaters  got  the  sole  right  to  play  legiti- 
mate pieces  in  London,  and  this  made  the 
author  their  slave.  They  robbed  him  of 
his  three  nights'  overplus,  and  threw  him 
a  few  pounds  for  a  drama  worth  thou-* 
sands.  As  to  the  provincial  theaters,  a 
single  pirate  drove  all  the  dramatists 
clean  out  of  them.  Here  is  a  copy  of  his 
public  advertisement — and  please  observe 
it  is  imprinted  plays  he  pirates  whole- 
sale : —  '•'  Mr.  Kenneth,  at  the  corner  of 
Bow  Street,  will  supply  any  gentleman 
with  any  manuscript  on  the  lowest 
terms" — and  here  is  an  example: — Mr. 
Douglas  Jerrold  gives  evidence  to  the 
Parliamentary  Commission,  Blue-book, 
p.  156: — "'The  Rent  Day '  was  played 
in  the  country  a  fortnight  after  it  was 
produced  at  Drury  Lane,  and  I  have  a 
letter  in  my  pocket  in  which  a  provincial 
manager  said  he  would  willingly  have 
given  me  £5  for  a  copy,  had  he  not  before 
paid  £3  for  it  to  some  stranger  "  (mean- 
ing Kenneth).  The  method  of  this  caitiff 
is  revealed  in  another  quarter.  "Ken- 
neth went  to  the  theater  with  a  short- 
hand writer,  who  took  the  words  down 
and  the  mise-enscene.  He  had  copyists 
ready  at  home  to  transcribe,  and  the 
stolen  goods  were  on  their  way  to  the 
provincial  theaters  in  a  few  hours."  But 
the  London  theaters  also  pirated  the  au- 
thor. Moncrieff  deposed  that  he  produced 
"Giovanni,"  a  musical  piece,  at  a  minor 
theater.  Drury  Lane,  one  of  the  two 
theaters  that  had  a  monopoly  in  legiti- 
mate pieces,  sent  into  Surrey,  stole  this 
illegitimate  piece,  and  played  it  in  the 
teeth  of  the  author.  The  manager  made 
thousands  by  it,  and  brought  out  Madame 
Vestris  in  it,  and  she  made  thousands. 
It  was  only   the   poor  author  that  was 


swindled  for  enriching  both  manager  and 
actor.  That  victim  of  ten  thousand 
wrongs  dared  not  resist  this  piece  of 
scoundrelism  ;  the  managers  would  have 
excluded  him  altogether  from  the  mar- 
ket, narrowed  by  monopoly. 

But  piracy  has  also  its  indirect  effects. 
Even  honest  people  will  not  give  much 
for  a  property  they  see  others  stealing. 
By  "  The  Rent  Day  "  the  theater  cleared 
twenty  thousand  pounds ;  but  the  author 
only  £150;  and  for  "  Black-eyed  Susan," 
which  saved  Manager  Elliston  from  bank- 
ruptcy and  made  him  flourish  like  a 
green  bay-tree,  the  author  received  only 
£60 ;  whereas  the  actor,  Cooke,  who 
played  a  single  part  in  it,  cleared  £4,000 
during  its  first  run,  and  afterward  made 
a  fortune  out  of  it  in  the  country  theaters, 
which  did  not  pay  the  author  at  all. 

The  Commissioners  proceeded  fairly. 
They  heard  the  authors  relate  their 
wrongs,  the  monopolists  defend  their 
monopolies,  and  the  pirates  prove  their 
thefts  pure  patriotisms  as  usual :  and 
they  reported  to  Parliament  a  deep  de- 
cline of  the  British  drama,  and  denounced 
as  its  two  causes,  the  monstrous  monopoly 
of  the  managers,  and  the  insecurity  of  the 
author's  property ;  on  the  latter  head 
these  are  their  instructive  words :  "  A 
dramatic  author  at  present  is  subjected 
to  indefensible  hardship  and  injustice, 
and  the  disparity  of  the  protection  af- 
forded to  his  labors,  when  compared  even 
with  that  granted  to  authors  in  any 
other  branch  of  letters,  seems  alone  suffi- 
cient to  divert  the  ambition  of  eminent 
and  successful  writers  from  that  depart- 
ment of  intellectual  exertion." 

Thereupon  Parliament,  in  the  interest 
of  justice  and  sound  national  policy,  took 
away  from  the  two  patent  theaters  their 
wicked  monopoly,  and  secured  the  prop- 
erty of  a  dramatist  by  a  stringent  enact- 
ment. The  last  link  in  the  evidence  is  the 
statute  itself.  3  &  4  Will.  IV.  did  not 
create  a  property  ;  it  found  one  ;  and  it 
found  a  law,  but  ineffectual.  The  title, 
which  is  evidence,  when  not  contradicted  in 
the  body  of  an  Act,  runs  thus  : — "  An  Act 
to  amend  the  laws  relating  to  dramatic 
literary  property."    Then,  as  to  the  Act 


284 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


itself,  it  protects  the  dramal  ist  so  sharply 
that  if  Parliament  had  been  oreating  a 
right  they  would  certainly  have  fixed  a 
term.  But  they  respected  the  common- 
law  right  they  were  nursing  and  left  it 
perpetual;  and  this,  to  my  personal 
knowledge,  they  did  because  of  the  grow- 
ing disgust  to  the  spoliation  authors  had 
suffered  from  preceding  Parliaments. 
What  this  Parliament  thought  was,  thai 
stage-right  existed  forever  in  unprinted 
dramas:  and  they  labored  to  extend  the 
right  to  its  just  consequences,  and  pro- 
tect it  forever  by  special  provisions. 
When  the  right  had  been  a  statutory 
right  for  ten  years,  it  got  curtailed  :  hut 
Parliament,  that  took  it  from  the  com- 
mon law,  did  not  curtail  it. 

This  is  the  mere  legal  history  of  two 
sacred  properties  up  to  the  dates  when 
Parliament,  after  profound  consideration, 
and  full  discussion  at  wide  intervals,  did. 
without  baste,  or  prejudice,  or  any  of 
those  perturbing  influences  with  which 
Lord  Camden  corrupted  lie-  peers  in  his 
day,  declare  both  these  properties  to  be 
not  monopolies,  bu1  personal  properl  ies. 
The  full  statutory  definition  amounts  to 
this — "They  are  personal  properties,  so 
sacred  during  the  term  of  their  stal  utory 
existence  that  they  carry  a  main  feature 
of  real  property  :  t  he  very  propriel  or 
cannot,  convey  them  to  another,  by  word 
of  mouth:  and  indeed  a  bare  license  1" 
print,  or  to  perform  in  a  theater,  con- 
currently with  the  proprietor,  is  void, 
unless  given  in  writing.''  This  distinct 
recognition  of  property  was  a  return,  in 
principle,  to  the  common  law.  and  the 
principle  was  too  just  and  healthy  not  to 
grow  and  expand.  Exceptional  law  is 
bad  law.  and  stands  still.  Good  law  is 
of  wide  application,  and  therefore  grows. 

When  one  nation  takes  wider  views  of 
justice  or  durable  policy  than  other  na- 
tions, we  do  not  say  like  our  forefathers. 
"  That  nation  is  hare-brained."  We  say, 
nowadays.  "That  nation  is  before  the 
rest  :  "  implying  that  we  shall  be  sure  to 
follow,  soon  or  late  :  and  we  always  do. 
France  saw  thirty  years  ago  that  children 
must  not  be  starved,  and  so  murdered,  by 
adulterated  milk.     She  enlisted  science ; 


detected,  fined,  imprisoned,  the  adultera- 
tors, and  made  them  advertise  their  own 
disgrace  in  several  journals.  She  was  not 
mad.  nor  divine ;  she  was  human,  but 
ahead.  Prussia  saw  long  ago  that  the 
minds  of  children  must  be  protected,  like 
their  other  reversionary  interests.  If, 
therefore,  parents  were  so  wicked  as  to 
bring  children  into  the  world  and  not 
educate  them,  she  warned,  she  fined,  she 
imprisoned,  the  indulgent  and  self-indul- 
gent criminals.  She  was  before  other 
nations,  that  is  all.  England  was  the 
first  to  see  free  trade.  She  was  before 
the  resl  of  Europe,  that  is  all.  France 
saw.  ages  ago,  that  if  A  creates  by  labor 
;i  new  intellectual  production,  and  B 
makes  one  of  its  vehicles,  the  paper, 
and  C  and  D  set  ap,  and  work,  the 
type,  which  is  another  vehicle,  and  print 
1  lie  sheets,  and  E  (the  publisher)  sells  the 
intellectual  production,  together  with  its 
s,  in  volumes  to  F  (the  retail  book- 
seller), and  F  sells  them  to  the  public,  all 
these  workers  and  traders  must  be  remu- 
nerated in  some  proportion  to  what  they 
contribute;  and  that  the  nationality 
either  of  A.  P..  ('.  1».  H.  or  F  is  equally 
irrelev  an1  ;  and  it  is  monsl  rous  to  pick 
o'it  A.  whose  contribution  to  the  value 
is  the  largest,  ami  say,  You  are  a  for- 
eigner, and  therefore  you  can  claim  nei- 
ther property,  nor  wages,  nor  profit  in 
France,  though  the  smaller  contributors, 
B,  C  D,  E,  and  F,  have  a  right  to  be  re- 
munerated, ic In- flu  r  lluij  ure  foreigners 
nr  not.  French  jurists,  with  the  superior 
logic  of  their  race,  saw  this  years  ago, 
and  in  1851  we  all  began  to  follow  the 
hading  nation,  according  to  our  lights  : 
and  they  were  blinkers  ;  because  we  were 
not  Latins,  but  Anglo-Saxons  :  God  has 
not  made  us  jurists :  so  the  devil  steps  in, 
whenever  we  are  off  our  guard,  and 
makes  us  pettifoggers. 

I  am  going  to  ask  Brother  Jonathan  a 
favor.  I  want  him  to  cast  a  side  glance, 
but  keen — as  himself — at  what  passed 
between  France  and  England  from  1851- 
1  b?5  inclusively,  and  then  ask  himself 
honestly  whether  the  European  things  I 
shall  relate  do  not    appeal   to  his    own 


READIANA. 


285 


sense  of  justice  and  true  public  policy. 
The  United  States  of  America  can  teach 
us,  and  have  taught  us,  many  things. 
We  can  teach  them  a  few  things  ;  not 
that  we  are  wiser,  but  that  we  are  older. 
Age  alone  brings  certain  experiences. 
In  the  United  States  piracy  says,  "I 
will  get  you  a  constant  supply  of  good 
cheap  books  and  dramas :  it  is  your  in- 
terest to  encourage  me,  and  not  to  foster 
literary  poverty."  Piracy  says  this  in 
the  United  States,  and  is  believed.  Why 
not  ?  It  looks  like  a  self-evident  truth. 
But  piracy  has  said  this  in  Europe  many 
times,  and  in  many  generations,  and  in 
many  countries,  and  has  been  believed, 
and  believed,  and  believed.  But  Euro- 
pean nations  have,  by  repeated  trials, 
at  sundry  times,  ami  in  divers  places, 
found  out  whether  what  piracy  says  is 
a  durable  truth,  or  a  plausible  lie. 
Thus,  what  in  America  is  still  a  matter 
of  intelligent  conjecture,  has  become,  in 
Europe,  a  matter  of  absolute,  proved, 
demonstrated  certainty;  and,  on  this 
account,  I  ask  American  statesmen,  for 
the  first  time  in  their  lives,  to  bring  the 
powers  of  their  mind  really  to  bear  on 
the  European  facts  I  shall  relate,  and 
am  ready  to  depose  to  on  oath  either 
before  an  American  Congress  or  a  Brit- 
ish Parliament.  Charles  Reade. 


FIFTH  LETTER. 

Sir  —  International  Copyright  and 
Stage-Right,  a.d.  1851-52. 

It  is  instructive  to  look  back  and  see 
how  this  great  advance  in  justice  and 
public  policy  was  received  by  different 
classes. 

1.  The  managers  of  our  theaters,  and 
the  writers  of  good  French  pieces  into 
bad  English  ones,  showed  uneasiness  and 
hostility. 

2.  The  British  publishers,  dead  apathy. 
M.  Paguerre,  President  of  the  "  Cercle  de 
la  Libraire,"  came  to  London  to  invite 
their  hearty  co-operation  ;    "  but   found 


them  indifferent,  except  as  regards 
America.  To  the  moral  bearings  of  the 
question  they  appeared  tolerably  callous." 
— Athenoeum,  September  20,  1851.  This 
was  afterward  proved  by  the  prodigious 
silence  of  their  organs.  On  this,  the 
greatest  literary  event  of  modern  times, 
the  Quarterly  Revieiv,  the  Edinburgh, 
the •British  Quarterly,  London  and  West- 
minster, Blackwood,  Eraser,  the  New 
Monthly,  North  British,  Christian  Ob- 
server, Eclectic  Revieiv,  Dublin  Re- 
view, Dublin  University  Review,  deliver- 
ed no  notice  nor  comment,  not  one  syllable. 
They  shut  out  contemporary  daylight, 
and  went  on  cooking  the  stale  cabbage  of 
small  old  ages,  by  the  light  of  a  farthing 
candle. 

3.  This  phenomenal  obtuseness  was  not 
shared  by  the  journals  and  weeklies.  The 
journalists,  though  they  have  little  per- 
sonal interest  in  literary  property,  being- 
remunerated  in  a  different  way,  uttered 
high  and  disinterested  views  of  justice 
and  public  policy.  They  welcomed  the 
treaty  unanimously.  Accept  a  few  ar- 
ticles as  index  to  the  rest.  Examiner, 
1851,  November  29;  1852,  January  24, 
September  4,  October  30.  Leader,  1851, 
November  15,  November  29.  Sunday 
Times,  December  7,  1851.  Era,  same 
date.  Critic,  1851,  March  15,  February 
2,1852.  The  Times,  1851,  November  19 
and  November  26  :  also  December  1,  p.  4, 
col.  6.  Illustrated  London  News,  1851, 
May  24.  Literary  Gazette,  1851,  May 
24,  July  5,  November  15,  November  22, 
December  13.  Athenceum,  1851,  January 
18,  March  15  and  29,  June  7,  August  2, 
September  20.  November  22.  Art  Jour- 
nal, 1851,  September  and  November. 
The  New  York  Literary  World,  March, 
1851.  It  would  be  agreeable  to  my  own 
feelings  to  go  through  these  articles ; 
they  bristle  with  hard  facts  proving  that 
piracy  upon  foreigners  is  a  mere  blight 
on  literature,  and  a  special  curse  to  the 
nation  the  pirate  lives  in.  But,  per- 
haps, a  reader  or  two,  like  those  St.  Paul 
calls  noble,  will  search  the  matter,  and,  to 
save  time,  the"  rest  may  believe  me,  writ- 
ing with  the  notes  before  me.  I  will, 
however,  select  a  good  specimen.     A  let- 


286 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


ter  from  Cologne,  by  an  old  observer  of 
piratical  translations  in  Germany,  states 
that  thirty  years  before  date,  good  tran- 
lations  of  Scott  came  into  the  German 
market;  Bulwer  followed,  then  Dickens. 
They  were  read  with  avidity  ;  so,  not  be- 
ing property,  rival  translations  came  out 
by  the  dozen.  This  cut  down  the  profits, 
and  the  rival  publishers  were  obliged  to 
keep  reducing  the  pay  of  the  translators 
— till  at  last  it  got  to  £6  for  translating 
3  vols.     Act  1. 

Act  2.  Bad  translations,  by  incompe- 
tent hands,  bad  type,  bad  paper  :.  value- 
less as  literature ;  yet,  by  English  repu- 
tation and  cheapness,  under-selling  the 
German  inventor.  Death  to  the  German 
novelist;  a  mere  fraud  on  the  German 
public— bad  translations  being  counter- 
feit coin — and  no  good  to  any  German 
publisher,  because  they  all  tore  the  specu- 
lation to  rags  at  the  firsl  symptom  of  a 
sale.  Literaii/  Gazette,  November  15, 
1851. 

The  Times,  November  36,  1851,  sup- 
ported the  proposed  treaty  in  a  leader 
taking  the  higher  ground  of  morality, 
justice,  and  humanity,  but  omitting 
sound  national  policy.  The  leader  con- 
tains such  observations  as  these: — "In- 
tellectual produce  lias  been  the  only  de- 
scription of  goods  excluded  from  equitable 

conditions  of  exchange."- -i  Genius  has 

been  outlawed.  The  property  it  should 
have  owned  has.  by  the  comity  of  nat  urns, 
been  treated  as  the  goods  of  a  convicted 
felon."  After  giving  examples  of  French, 
English,  and  American  genius  pillaged. 
the  writer  goes  on  thus: — "Still  worse, 
copies  were  multiplied  at  a  cheap  rale  in 
Brussels,  and   disseminated   all  over  the 

Continent.'" ''There  has  long  existed 

a   profound  immorality  of  thought   with 

regard  to  the  productions  of  genius.'" 

"  How  short-sighted  the  policj-  has  been, 
the  example  of  Belgium  evinces.  The 
effect  of  its  habitual  piracy  has  simply 
been  the  extinction  of  literacy  genius 
throughout  Belgium." 

The  Illustrated  London  Neivs,  May 
24,  1851,  welcomed  international  justice, 
and  put  the  logic  of  international  larceny 
rather  neatl}- : — "  An  English  book  was 


treated  like  any  other  commodity  pro- 
duced by  skill  and  industry,  and  so  was 
a  foreigner's  watch  ;  but  not  a  foreigner's 
book." 

In  a  word,  the  British  journalists,  all 
those  years  ago,  showed  rare  enlighten- 
ment, and  personal  generosity  ;  for  there 
are  no  writers  more  able,  and  indeed  few 
so  surprising  to  poor  Me,  as  the  first-class 
journalist,  whose  mind  can  pour  out 
treasures  with  incredible  swiftness,  and 
at  any  hour,  however  unfavorable  to 
composition;  bed-time,  to  wit,  or  even 
digestion-time.  Yet  these  remarkable 
men.  in  their  business,  sacrifice  personal 
reputation,  and  see  it  enjoyed  by  moder- 
ate writers  of  books  :  this  would  sour  a 
petty  mind,  and  the  man  would  say,  like 
Lord  Camden.  '  Let  authors  be  content 
with  the  reputation  they  gain  :  and  what 
is  literary  property  to  me?  /have  no 
stake  in  it."  But  these  gentlemen 
showed  themselves  higher-minded  than 
Lord  Camden;  they  silenced  egotism, 
and  rose  unanimously  to  the  lofty  levels 
of  international  justice  ami  sound  policy; 
and  it  would  ill  become  me,  and  my  fel- 
lows, in  Gnat  Britain  and  America,  to 
forgel  tins  good  deed,  or  to  pass  it  by 
without  a  word  of  gratitude  and  esteem. 

4.  With  less  merit,  because  we  were 
interested,  every  author  worthy  of  the 
name  hailed  the  new  morality  with  ardor. 
The  American  authors  in  particular  con- 
ceived hopes  that  justice  and  sound  policy 
would  cross  a  wider  water  than  the  ditch 
which  bad  hitherto  obstructed  the  march 
of  justice  in  Europe;  and  they  organized 
a  club  to  support  the  movement,  with 
Mr.  Bryant  for  president. 

I  myself  had  glorious  hopes  I  now  look 
back  on  with  bitter  melancholy.  I  was 
one  of  the  very  few  men  who  foresaw  a 
glorious  future  for  the  British  drama.  It 
was  then  so  thoroughly  divorced  from  lit- 
erature, and  so  degraded,  that  scholars  in 
general  believed  it  could  never  again  rear 
its  head,  which  once  towered  above  all 
nations.  But  I  was  too  well  read  in  its  pre- 
vious fluctuations,  and.  above  all,  in  their 
causes,  to  mistake  a  black  blight  on  the 
leaves  for  a  decayed  root.  England  is  by 
nature  the  most  dramatic  country  in  the 


READIANA. 


287 


world  ;  piracy,  while  it  lasts,  has  always 
been  able  to  overpower  nature,  and  al- 
ways will :  but,  piracy  got  rid  of,  nature 
revives.  The  condition  of  the  theater, 
in  1851,  was  this — a  province  of  France, 
governed  by  English  lieutenants,  writers 
without  genius,  petty  playwrights,  pub- 
lic critics,  who  could  get  their  vile  ver- 
sions of  a  French  play  publicly  praised 
by  the  other  members  of  their  clique. 
The  manager  was  generally  an  actor 
thirsting  for  this  venal  praise.  If  he  pro- 
duced an  original  play,  he  was  pretty 
sure  not  to  get  it :  but,  by  dealing  with 
the  clique  for  stolen  goods,  he  secured  an 
article  that  suited  him  to  a  T ;  it  was 
cheap,  nasty,  praised.  The  first-class 
theaters,  whose  large  receipts  qualified 
them  to  encourage  the  British  inventor, 
barred  him  out  with  new  French  plays, 
or  old  English  ones — anything  they  could 
steal;  yet  they  could  spend  £80  a  night 
for  actors  and  singers. 

Haymarket  Theater,  1851.  Opened 
with  Macready's  farewells.  Began  its 
pieces,  February  4,  with  "  Good  for 
Nothing  "  (French) :  February  6,  '•  Pre- 
sented at  Court"  (French);  March  3, 
"  Don  Cassar  de  Bazan  "  (French) ;  March 
8.  "  Othello  ;  "  March  25,  "  Tartuffe  " 
(French) ;  March  27,  "  Make  the  Best  of 
It"  (French);  April  21.  "  Arline "  (a 
piratical  burlesque  of  an  English  opera) ; 
May  3,  "Retired  from  Business"  (En- 
glish, perhaps)  ;  May  26,  "  Crown  Dia- 
monds" (French) ;  June  18,  "The  Cadi" 
(French);  June  23,  "John  Dobbs " 
(French)  ;  June  24,  Mr.  Hackett,  an 
American  actor,  in  FalstafT,  etc.;  July 
1,  "  Grimshaw,  Bagshaw,  and  Brad- 
shaw "  (French);  July  7,  "Son  and 
Stranger"  (German);  August  13,  "The 
Queen  of  a  Day  "  (I  don't  know  whether 
original  or  French);  August  21.  "His 
First  Champagne"  (French);  "Tar- 
tuffe" and  "The  Serious  Family  "  (both 
French);  September  10,  "  Grandmother 
Grizzle"  (French);  October  11,  "La 
Sonnambula  "  (Italian).  "Grandmother 
Grizzle"  (French),  and  "Grimshaw," 
etc.;  October  14,  '•Sonnambula"  and 
"Mrs.  White"  (French);  November 
17,     "Charles    the     Second"    (French), 


"  God  Save  the  King  " — a  Jacobite  song, 
the  words  and  treble  by  Henry  Carey, 
the  bass  by  Smith  (Carey  sang  "  God 
Save  King  James  "  till  the  tide  turned 
against  the  Stuarts,  and  carried  this 
melody  with  it,  lines  and  all) — "  Rough 
Diamond  "(French)  ;  November  IS,  "The 
Ladies'  Battle  "  (French)  ;  November  25, 
"The  Two  Bonnycastles  "  (French)  ;  No- 
vember 26,  "The  Beggar's  Opera"  (Old 
English) ;  December  9,  "  The  Man  of 
Law  "  (French)  ;  December  2,  "  The 
Princess  Radiant"  (doubtful). 

The  Lyceum.  January  1  to  March  24, 
"  King  Charming  "  (French  story  dram- 
atized), and  farces ;  March  24,  "  Cool 
as  a  Cucumber"  (French);  April  21, 
"Queen  of  the  Frogs"  (French  fairy 
tale)  ;  May  20,  "  Only  a  Clod  "  (French)  ; 
June  4,  "Court  Beauties"  (French); 
October  2,  "  Game  of  Speculation " 
(French),  "Forty  and  Fifty"  (French), 
"Practical  Man"  (English,  I  think); 
December  26,  "Prince  of  Happy  Land" 
(French  story  dramatized).  This  is  no 
selection,  but  the  whole  business  of  these 
first-class  London  theaters,  and  a  true 
picture  of  the  drama  in  the  City  of 
Shakespeare. 

I  comprehended  the  entire  situation, 
and  saw  that  the  new  treaty  was  a  god- 
send, and  might  give  England  back  her 
drama,  if  supported  heartily.  I  visited 
France,  and  many  of  her  dramatists;  we 
hailed  the  rising  sun  of  justice  together, 
and,  as  good  words  without,  deeds  are 
rushes  and  reeds,  I  gave  Auguste  Maquet 
£40  for  his  new  drama,  "  Le  Chateau  de 
Grantier." 

The  promised  Act  of  Parliament  came 
out.  Alas  ! — what  a  disappointment !  A 
penny  dole,  clogged  with  a  series  of  ill- 
natured  conditions.  It  was  like  a  moth- 
er's conscience  compelled  to  side  with  a 
stranger  against  the  child  of  her  heart — 
"  Oh,  they  all  tell  me  he  is  a  blackguard  ; 
but  he  is  such  a  darling."  It  was  full 
of  loopholes  for  the  sweet  pirate  :  full  of 
gins,  and  springes,  and  traps  for  authors 
and  honest  traders. 

International  Copyright. — The  State 
sells  to  the  foreign  author  the  sole  right 
of  translation  and  sale  in  England,  for  a 


288 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    RE  AVE. 


petty  period,  on  cruel  conditions.  1.  He 
must  notify  on  the  title-page  of  the  orig- 
inal work  that  lie  reserves  the  right  of 
translation.  2.  He  must  register  the 
original  work  at  our  Stationers'  Hall — 
a  rat-hole  in  the  City — and  deposit  a  copy 
gratis  within  three  months  after  first 
publication.  3.  Must  publish  authorized 
translation  in  England  within  one  year. 
4.  Must  register  that  translation,  and 
deposit  a  copy  in  our  rat-hole,  within  a 
certain  time. — 15  &  16  Vict.  cap.  12.  In 
short,  the  State  is  "alma  mater"  to  the 
rascal,  "injusta  noverca''  to  the  honest 
trader. 

The  poor  wretch,  protected  after  this 
fashion,  glares  and  trembles,  and  says  to 
himself,  "Incedo  per  ignes."  The  firsl 
stipulation  is  reasonable,  and  all-suffi- 
cient; the  rest  are  utterly  superfluous, 
vexatious,  oppressive,  ill-natured.  If  tin- 
foreign  author  and  his  assignee  escape  by 
a  miracle  all  these  gins,  springes,  and 
author-traps,  the  State  secures  them  for 
five  years  only  what  was  t  heir  own  for- 
ever jure  'liriiio,  and  bt/  the  law  of 
France,  and  by  the  universal  human 
law  of  productive,  unsalaried  labor, 
without  any  gins,  spri  _■■■  or  ill-natured, 
catch-penny  conditions  whatever. 

International  stage-right,  15  &  16  Viet. 
cap.  12. 

Stipulations  L,  2,  and  1,  same  as  above. 

3.  Must  publish  the  authorized  trans- 
lation in  England  within  three  months  of 
registering  original  play.  etc. 

In  this  clause,  and  indeed  in  Xo.  2,  you 
see  the  old  unhappy  confusion  of  stage- 
right  with  copyright.  Why.  in  the  name 
of  common  sense,  is  the  dramatist,  be- 
cause he  objects  to  be  swindled  in  a  thea- 
ter, to  be  compelled  to  publish  ?  Pub- 
lication is  not  a  dramatist's  market. 
There  is  no  sale  for  a  play-book  in  En- 
gland nowadays.  How  can  the  poor 
wretch  afford  to  translate  and  publish 
a  translated  play,  of  which  the  public 
would  not  take  six  copies,  though  he 
should  spend  £100  advertising?  Such 
imbecile  legislation  makes  one's  blood 
boil.  Was  ever  so  larcenous  a  tax  on 
honesty  ?  It  is  a  pecuniary  premium  on 
Theatrical   Piracy ;    that  kind  of  pirate 


does  not  print ;  he  merely  steals  and  sells 
to  the  Theater:  so  his  '"alma  mater," 
and  our  "  injusta  noverca."'  does  not  per- 
secute him  with  any  tyrannical  and  irrel- 
evant tax  applicable  to  copyright,  but 
not  to  stage-right.  It  only  bleeds  the 
everlasting   victim,    the    honest    author. 

But  there  was  worse  behind.  When 
the  victim  of  ten  thousand  wrongs  has 
been  bled  out  of  all  the  money  it  costs 
to  publish  an  unsalable  translation,  and 
has  escaped  the  gins,  springes,  author- 
traps,  and  probity-scourges,  and  looks 
for  his  penny  dole,  his  paltry  live  years' 
stage-right,  then  he  is  encountered  with 
a  perfidious  pro\  iso. 

"Nothing  herein  contained  shall  be  so 
construed  as  to  prevent  fair  imitation  or 
adaptation  to  the  English  stage  of  any 
dramatic  piece  or  musical  composition 
published  in  any  foreign  country,  bul 
only  of  piral  ical  t  ranslations." 

Now,  the  English  theater  has  seldom 
played  a  translation;  the  staple  piracy 
from  1662  to  1852,  and  long  after,  was  by 
altering  the  names  of  men  and  places 
from  French  to  English,  shortening  and 
vulgarizing  the  dialogue,  and  sometimes 
combining  two  French  pieces,  and  some- 
times altering  the  sex  of  a  character  or 
two;  sometimes,  though  very  rarely, 
adding  a  character,  as  Mawworm  in 
"The  Hypocrite"  adapted  from  "Tar- 
tuU'e."  But  whether  servile  or  loose,  the 
versions  from  French  pieces  were  adapta- 
tions, not  honest  translations;  and  all 
the  more  objectionable,  since  here  a  dunce 
gratifies  his  vanity  as  well  as  his  dis- 
honesty, and  shams  originality,  which  is 
a  fraud  on  the  English  public  as  well  as 
on  the  French  writer:  moreover,  it  is  t he- 
adaptation  swindle  that  turns  French 
truths  into  English  lies.  The  Legisla- 
ture, therefore,  appeared  to  say  this: — 
"The  form  of  piracy  most  convenient  to 
the  English  dramatic  pirate  seems  to  be 
not  direct  reproduction  :  but  colorable 
piracy.  We  will  profit  by  thai  ex- 
perience. We  will  compel  the  honest 
dealer  to  translate  literally ;  we  will 
put  the  poor  devil  to  the  expense  of 
publishing  his  literal  translation.  No 
manager  will  ever  play  his  literal  trans- 


READIANA. 


289 


lation.  However,  to  make  sure  of  that, 
we  now  legalize  piracy  in  the  established 
and  fashionable  form  of  fair  adaptation 
or  imitation." 

This,  after  one's  experiences  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  pettifogger,  seemed  to  re- 
veal that  animal  at  work  defiling  the 
scheme  of  the  Latin  jurists,  and  ensnar- 
ing his  favorite  victim,  an  author's  prop- 
erty :  and  so  it  turned  out  to  be.  We 
soon  learned  how  the  trick  had  been 
done ;  a  piratical  manager  had  employed 
a  piratical  writer  to  crawl  up  the  back 
stairs  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
earwig  Lord  Palmerston,  and  get  this 
proviso  inserted  to  swindle  the  French 
dramatist.  The  Minister,  I  need  hardly 
say,  did  not  realize  what  a  perfid3'  he 
was  lending  himself  to,  and  the  French 
Government  had  no  chance  of  divining 
the  swindle,  because  this  thief's  cant  of 
"fair  adaptations  and  imitations"  is 
entirely  English  ;  the  Frenchmen  did  not 
even  know  what  the  words  meant,  nor 
are  they  translatable;  ''imitations  faites 
de  bonne  foi  "  has  quite  a  different  sense 
from  "fair  imitations;  "  and  how  could 
they  suspect  that  a  great  nation,  treat- 
ing with  them  on  professedly  higher 
views  of  national  justice  than  had  here- 
tofore prevailed,  could  hold  out  its  right 
hand  to  receive  protection  of  its  main 
intellectual  export — magazines,  reviews, 
histories,  biographies,  novels — yet  with 
its  left  hand  slyly  filch  away  the  main 
intellectual  export  of  the  nation  it  was 
dealing  with,  in  time  of  peace  and  in  de- 
clared amity. 

History,  thank  God,  offers  few  ex- 
amples of  such  turpitude.  But  why? 
It  is  only  because  legislators,  in  pro- 
tecting any  other  class  of  property,  are 
never  so  weak  as  to  take  advice  of 
pirates — a  set  of  God-abandoned  mis- 
creants, whose  advice  to  us,  and  to 
you,  Brother  Jonathan,  and  to  any 
other  nation  on  the  globe,  is  always  a 
compound  of  Newgate  and  Bedlam. 

When  the  French  did  find  the  Satanic 
juggle  out,  they  concealed  neither  their 
disgust  nor  their  contempt.  They  re- 
minded each  other  that  their  fathers 
had    used    a    certain    phrase,    "  Perfide 

Ekade — Vol.  IX. 


Albion,"  which  we  had  treated  as  a 
jest.  Was  it  such  a  jest,  after  all? 
Could  we  discover  a  more  accurate 
epitaph  for  this  piece  of  dastardly  jug- 
gling ? 

Here  is  a  distich  they  applied  : 

Comptez  done  sur  les  traites  signes  par 

le  mensonge. 
Ces  actes  solennels  avec  art  prepares  ; 

and  here  a  quatrain  on  the  "fair  imita- 
tions "  that  our  Legislature  protected 
and  secured  gratis  as  soon  as  ever  it 
had  decoyed  the  poor  honest  gull  into 
the  expense  of  publishing  the  transla- 
tion that  no  creature  could  try  to  read 
nor  theater  would  play  : 

Quoiqu'en  disent  certains  railleurs, 
J'imite,  et  jamais  je  ne  pit  le. 

Vous  avez  raison,  Monsieur  Drille  : 
Oui,  vous  imitez — les  voleurs. 

The  Satanic  proviso  that  disgraced  us 
in  the  eyes  of  a  noble  nation  recoiled,  as 
it  always  does  and  always  will,  Brother 
Jonathan,  upon  the  nation  that  had  been 
inveigled  into  legalizing  piracy.  It  post- 
poned the  great  British  drama  for  an- 
other quarter  of  a  century.  Colorable 
piracy  of  French  pieces  being  legalized 
instead  of  crushed,  drove  the  native 
dramatist  off  the  boards.  The  shops 
were  limited  by  monopoly  (6  and  7  Vic- 
toria), and  piracy  enabled  a  clique  of 
uninventive  writers  to  monopolize  the 
goods.  If,  by  a  miracle,  a  genuine 
dramatist  got  a  play  played,  then  pi- 
racy punished  him  in  another  way.  The 
price  was  not  a  remuneration,  but  a  pun- 
ishment, of  labor  and  skill.  I  saved  a 
first-class  theater  from  bankruptcy,  with 
a  drama.  I  received  only  £110;  and  the 
last  ten  pounds  I  had  to  county-court  the 
manager  for:  gratitude  is  too  good  a 
thing  to  waste  on  that  etherial  vapor, 
ycleped  an  author.  For  "Masks  and 
Faces,"  a  comedy  which  has  survived 
a  thousand  French  pieces,  and  more, 
Mr.  Taylor  and  I  received  £150.  In 
France  it  would  have  been  £4,000.  For 
"Two  Loves  and  a  Life,"  a  drama  that 
has  been  played  throughout  Anqlo-Sax- 

"10 


290 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


ony,  and  is  played  to  this  day,  we  re- 
ceived £100.  In  France  it  would  have 
heen  worth  £5,000.  The  reason  is.  a 
manager  was — through  bad  legislation 
— a  fence,  or  receiver  of  stolen  goods, 
and  he  would  only  pay  fence's  prices  eveD 
to  inventors.  I  am  known,  I  believe,  as 
a  novelist ;  but  my  natural  gift  was  for 
the  drama  :  my  greatest  love  was  for  the 
drama  ;  yet  the  Satanic  proviso,  and  the 
colorable  piracy  it  inflicted  on  the  nation. 
di'ove  me  off  the  boards,  and  many  other 
men  of  similar  caliber. 

1  beg  attention  to  this,  not  as  a  per- 
sonal wrong :  in   i  hal    lighl    1  should  be 

ashamed  to  lay  il  before  l  he  \\y\-_ 
American  public,  but  as  one  of  a  thou- 
sand useful  examples,  that  nature  gives 
way  before  piracy.  Ahle  men  always 
did,  and  always  must ,  turn  from  their 
natural  market,  choked,  defiled  and  low- 
ered, by  piracy,  bo  some  other  less  con- 
genial business,  where  there  is  fair  play. 
This  is  how  American  literature  is  even 
now  depopulated.  I  invite  eviden 
American  authors. 

The  Satanic  proviso  injured  the  drama. 
\  French  truth.  I  repeat,  may  be  an 
English   lie  ;    and.  as   ;  ter   puis 

English    names    of    men    and    p  : 
French  pieces,  this  happened   eternally. 
The   maids  and  wives   presented   on  the 
English  stage  were  called  Mrs.  and  Miss; 
but  the  situatioi  -  I  iments  were 

French.     Thus    the    women     of     England 

were    habitually    misrepresented.      Now 

the  public  gets  tired  of  a  shop  that 
keeps  selling  false  pictures  of  familiar 
objects. 

The  Satanic  proviso  injured  our  drama 
m  a  third  way.  Property  never  blocks 
the  theater:  piracy  always.  "The 
Courier  of  Lyons  "  was  played  in  nearly 
every  London  theater,  one  year.  1855; 
and  made  the  theater  unpopular  by  mo- 
notony. "The  Corsican  Brothers"  was 
played  in  every  London  theater  without 
exception,  and  in  many  of  them  at  the 
same  time.  In  the  drama's  healthy  day 
each  theater  played  its  own  pieces.  But, 
under  the  hoof  of  piracy,  variety  is 
crushed  :  in  one  month,  viz..  May,  1852, 
the    Princess's    Theater     played    "  The 


Corsican  Brothers,"  Surray  Theater 
"  Corsican  Brothers,"  Hay  market  "  O 
Gemini !  " — a  burlesque  on  the  subject, 
and  Olympic  "  Camberwell  Brothers." 
Adelphi,  which  had  played  "The  Cor- 
sican Brothers,"  was  playing  "  The 
Queen  of  the  Market"  ("La  Dame  de 
la  Halle"'):  Strand.  "The  Lost  Hus- 
band" ("La  Dame  de  la  Halle"'):  Ly- 
ceum. "Chain  of  Events"  ("La  Dame 
de  la  Halle").  As  for  "Don  Caesar  de 
Kazan"  that  piece  entirely  blocked  the 
lss  London  theaters  for  months: 
and  I,  who  write  these  lines,  fled  to  Paris, 
where  "Don  Caesar"  was  property, 
bo  get  away  from  the  doomed 
city,  where  "Don  Caesar,"  not  being 
property,  had  become  a  monotony- 
scourge,  and  an  emptier  of  theaters 
into  music-halls,  public-houses  and  Bap- 
tist chapels. 

In  1859.  though  I  had  Left  the  theater 

il -pair.  I  still  thought    it    my  duty  to 

1  he  Satanic  proviso  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  nation  and  of  other  dramatists, 
whom  it  would  otherwise  stifle,  as  it  had 
1  wrote  a  book  denouncing  it  on 
tin1  two  grounds  of  justice  and  public 
policy:  and  I  appealed,  in  that  book,  to 
the  commercial  probity  and  v.-<^^\  sense 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  sense 
of  honor  in  legal  matters  which  resides, 
I  tally,  in  the  bosom  of  the  Peers. 
ed  :  and  it  fell  among 
stones.  I  hope  for  better  luck  this  time. 
But  were  I  sure  to  fail,  and  fail,  as  long 
as  I  live,  I  would  still  sow  the  good  seed, 
thai  cannot  wholly  die:  for  it  is  truth 
immortal. 

There  being,  at  that  1  hue,  a  great  out- 
cry against  American  piracy.  I  publicly 
denied  that  the  United  States  had  ever 
been  guilty  of  any  act  so  dishonest,  dis- 
loyal and  double-faced,  as  Greal  Britain 
had  committed  by  treating  with  France 
for  international  rights,  and  contriving, 
under  cover  of  that  treaty,  to  steal  the 
main  intellectual  property  of  that  em- 
pire ;  and  I  offered  to  bet  £70  to  £40  this 
was  so.  "' The  Eighth  Commandment," 
p.  156.  I  refer  to  that  now,  because  it  is 
a  fair  proof  I  am  one,  who  can  hold  the 
balance  between  my  native  country  and 


EEADIANA. 


291 


the  United  States ;  and  such,  I  think,  are 
the  men  to  whom  that  great  Republic 
should  lend  an  ear ;  for  such  men  are 
somewhat  rare  :  they  have  some  claim  to 
be  called  citizens  of  the  world,  and  are 
as  incapable  of  deliberate  injustice,  as 
sham  patriots  are  incapable  either  of 
national  justice,  or  national  wisdom. 

In  1S66  I  was  examined,  before  the 
House  of  Commons,  by  Mr.  Goschen, 
and  cross-examined  by  members  rather 
hostile  to  my  views.  I  answered  150 
questions,  most  of  them  judiciously  put ; 
and  full  a  third  of  them  bore  on  the 
effects  of  national  piracy  in  injuring  the 
nation  that  pirates.  Cross-examination 
trebles  the  value  of  evidence  ;  and  there- 
fore I  recommend  it  with  some  confidence 
to  the  study  of  those,  who  care  enough 
for  the  truth  in  these  matters,  to  prefer 
the  sunlight  of  experience  to  that  jack- 
o'lantern,  «  priori  reasoning.  I  have  no 
time  to  quote  more  than  one  answer : 
"If  you  strike  out  that  clause  (the  Sa- 
tanic proviso),  I  pledge  you  my  honor  as 
a  gentleman  that  you  will  see  a  great 
drama  arise  in  England."  (Report  of 
the  Select  Committee  on  Theatrical  Li- 
censes. Price  3s.  Sd.  Index  9d.  Han- 
sard, Great  Queen  Street,  London.) 

1875. — Parliament  has  rescinded  the 
Satanic  proviso,  and  thereby  laid  the 
first  stone  of  a  great  British  drama,  as 
time  will  show. 

Between  1852  and  1875  I  felt,  with 
many  others,  that  the  American  Legis- 
lature is  cruel  and  unjust  to  authors ; 
but  I  have  never  urged  it  with  any 
spirit,  because  mjr  noble  ardor  was 
chilled  by  a  precept  of  the  highest  pos- 
sible authority — to  say  nothing  of  its 
morality  and  good  sense.  I  think  it 
runs  to  this  effect,  errors  excepted: 
"Take  out  first  the  beam  that  is  in 
thine  own  eye,  and  then  shalt  thou  see 
clearly  to  take  out  the  mote  in  Brother 
Jonathan's  eye." 

Now  this  year,  Parliament  having  at 
last  taken  the  beam  out  of  my  eye,  I  do 
see  my  way  to  addi*ess  a  remonstrance  to 
that  great  nation,  which  hang-s  aloof  from 
modern  progress,  and  selects  for  hatred, 
contempt,    and    outlawry,   while    living, 


those  superior  men,  whose  dead  bones  it 
worships.  Charles  Readk. 


SIXTH  LETTER. 

Sir — International  Copyright  with 
America  : — The  question  has  been  mooted 
for  forty  years,  and  various  British  Gov- 
ernments have  made  languid  movements 
toward  obtaining  justice  for  British  and 
American  authors.  These  have  failed  : 
languor  often  does  :  so  now  faint-hearted 
souls  say  "Oh,  it  is  no  use  :  you  might  as 
well  appeal  to  the  Andes  against  snow, 
or  to  a  hog  in  his  neighbor's  garden  for 
clemency  to  potatoes,  as  ask  the  Ameri- 
cans for  humanity  to  British  authors." 

Before  I  can  quite  believe  this,  they 
must  write  out  of  my  head,  and  my  heart, 
that  this  American  people,  torn  by  civil 
war,  and  heart-sore  at  what  seemed  our 
want  of  principle  and  just  sympathy,  sent 
over  a  large  sum  of  money  to  relieve  the 
British  cotton-spinners,  whom  that  war, 
and  their  own  imprudent  habits,  had 
brought  low.  Moreover,  I  can  never  de- 
spair of  a  cause,  because  it  has  been 
bungled  for  forty  years.  There  is  a  key 
to  every  lock  ;  and.  if  people  will  go  on 
trying  the  wrong  keys  for  forty  years, 
that  is  no  proof  that  the  right  key  will 
fail  for  forty  more.  To  find  the  right- 
key,  we  must  survey — for  the  first  time — 
the  whole  American  situation.  It  com- 
prises five  parties  ;  the  judges — the  Legis- 
lature— the  authors — the  publishers — the 
people. 

The  judges — what,  in  speaking  to  a 
Frenchman,  we  call  the  law  of  England, 
is,  in  America,  the  common  law  of  both 
countries :  our  common  ancestors  grew 
it :  the  American  colonists  carried  it  in 
their  breasts  across  the  Atlantic ;  and  it 
has  the  same  authority  in  the  States  as 
here  :  it  bows  to  legislative  enactments  : 
but,  wherever  they  are  silent,  it  is  the  law 
of  the  land.  An  American  lawyer,  who 
cites  it  with  the  reverence  it  really  de- 
serves, does  not  pay  us  any  compliment. 


292 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


He  is  going  back  to  the  wisdom  and  jus- 
tice of  his  own  ancestors.  Now  Congress 
not  having  meddled  with  international 
copyright  or  stage-right,  an  English  au- 
thor's copyright  in  New  York.  a.d.  1875, 
is  what  it  was  in  London  before  the 
Statute  of  Queen  Anne,  and  his  stage- 
right  what  it  was  before  3  and  4  William 
IV. 

Half  our  battle  is  won  in  the  courts; 
for  the  American  judges  concede  to  an 
English  author  stage-right  in  imprinted 
dramas.  "Keener.  Wheatley  ;  "  9  Ameri- 
can Law  Reg.  23.  "  Crowe  v.  Aitken  ;  " 
4  Am.  Law  Review,  23,  and  other  cases. 
And  they  concede  copyright  in  unpub- 
lished manuscripts  ("Palmer  v.  De  W  itt," 
etc.). 

If,  under  the  latter  bead,  they  tied  the 
sole  right  of  printing  to  the  paper  and 
handwriting  of  the  manuscript,  our  case 
would  be  hopeless.  But  they  disown 
this  theory,  and  give  .a  British  author  the 
incorporeal  right,  I  b.a1  is.  |  tie  sole  righl  to 
print  his  composition,  though  tin-  pirate 
vkii/  be  in  as  lawful  possession  of  a  copy 
as  is  the  public  purchaser  of  a  printed 
book.  I  shall  now  prove  thai  full  inter- 
national copyright  is  included  in  tl 
mission. 

There  are  three  theories  of  copyright  at 
common  law  : 

The  washerwoman's  theory. 

The  lawyer's  theory. 

The  mad  sophist  *s  theory. 

The  Washerwoman's  Theory. — That 
there  can  be  no  incorporeal  to  property  at 
common  law.    An  author's  manuscript  is 

property.  If  another  misappropriates 
it,  and  prints  the  words,  that  is  unlaw- 
ful :  but  the  root  of  the  offense  is  misap- 
propriating the  material  object,  the 
author's  own  written  paper.  Thus,  if  a 
hen  is  taken  unlawfully,  to  sell  ti 
she  lays  after  misappropriation  is  unlaw- 
ful. 

The  lawyer's  and  the  sophist's  theory 
both  rest  on  a  fundamental  theory  op- 
posed to  the  above — viz.,  that  an  author's 
mental  labor,  intellectual  and  physical, 
creates  a  mixed  property,  words  on  paper  ; 
that  the  words  are  valuable  as  vehicles  of 


ideas,  and  are  a  property  distinct  from 
the  paper;  and  only  the  author  has  a 
right  to  print  them  under  any  circum- 
stances. Examples:  Pope  wrote  letters 
to  various  people:  they  paid  the  postage; 
the  paper,  and  the  inked  forms  of  the 
letters,  became  theirs,  and  ceased  to  lie 
Pi  pe's.  Curll  possessed  this  corporeal 
property  lawfully.  Yet  Pope  restrained 
the  printing.     "Pope  v.  Curll." 

Lord  Clarendon  gave  a  written  copy  of 
the  famous  history  to  a  friend.  That 
gentleman's  son  inherited  it.  Had  Lord 
Clarendon's  heir  misappropriated  this 
written  paper,  he  could  have  been  in- 
dicted, and  sent  to  jail.  Yet.  when  the 
lawful  possessor  of  the  transcript  .sent  it 
to  press,  with  the  words  on  il  not  written 
bj  the  author's  hand,  bul  conveying  the 
author's  ideas,  Lord  Clarendon's  heir  sued 
him.  nearly  a  century  after  the  history  was 
composed,  and  obtained  heavy  damages: 
••Duke  of  Queensberry  w.  Shebbeare." 
There  are  many  other  cases,  including 
••  Macklin  v.  Richardson,"  and  "  Palmer 
v.  De  Witt,"  lately  uied  in  New  York. 
]iui  t  his  peculiar  posit  ion  in  "  Queens- 
berry  v.  Shebbeare  "  is  the  besl  to  scruti- 
nize. A  is  the  lawful  possessor,  by  in- 
heritance, of  a  transcript.  B  is  the 
a  ui  bor's  heir.  If  B  steals  A's  i  ranscript, 
he  can  be  indicted;  if  A  prints  his  own 
transcript,  he  violates  the  pure  incor- 
poreal copyrighl  of  B,  and  cannot  be  in- 
dicted, but  can  be  sued  on  the  case  for 
violation  of  a  property  as  incorporeal  and 
d  from  paper  and  all  other  ma- 
substance,  as  any  thai  was  con- 
firmed to  an  author  Iry  Queen  Anne's 
Statute,  or  the  Acts  of  Congress  in  re. 

The  Lawyer's  Theory. — When  an 
author  exerts  this  admitted  incorporeal 
right,  by  printing  and  publishing,  anew 

party  enters,  the  public  purchaser:  he 
acquires  new  rights,  which  have  to  be 
weighed  against  the  author's  existing 
right  strengthened  by  possession  ;  for  the 
author  has  created  a  large  material 
property  under  his  title,  which  would  be 
destroyed  as  property  if  his  copyright 
was  forfeited  by  publication. 
How  our  ancestors  dealt  with  this  situ- 


EX  A  DIANA. 


293 


ation  is  a  simple  matter  of  history;  there- 
fore we  distrust  speculation  enth'ely  and 
go  by  the  legal  evidence. 

The  Mad  Sophist's  Theory  rejects 
with  us  the  washerwoman's  theory,  and 
concedes  that  an  author  has,  at  common 
law,  intellectual  property,  or  copyright, 
thus  abridged — he  has  the  sole  right, 
under  any  circumstances  whatever,  to 
print  his  imprinted  words.  But,  when  he 
publishes,  he  sells  the  volumes  without 
reserve  :  he  cannot  abridg-e  his  contract 
with  the  reader,  and  retain  the  sole  right 
under  which  he  printed.  He  has  aban- 
doned his  copyright  by  the  legal  force  of 
his  act,  and  this  is  so  self-evident  that  the 
sophist  declines  to  receive  evidence 
against  it.  Whether  copyright  in  printed 
books  existed  before  Queen  Anne's  Act, 
he  decides  in  a  later  age,  whose  modes  of 
thinking  are  different,  by  a  priori  reason- 
ing, and  refuses  to  inquire  how  old  the 
word  "copy  "  is.  or  what  is  meant  under 
the  Tudor  and  Stuart  Princes,  in  acts  of 
State,  licensing  Acts,  and  legal  assign- 
ments, or  to  look  into  the  case  of  "  Roper 
v.  Streater,"  ''Eyre  v.  Walker,"  or  any 
other  legal  evidence  whatever. 

This  was  the  ground  taken  by  Justice 
Yates  in  "  Millar  v.  Taylor."'  He  founded 
a  school  of  copyright  sophists,  reasoning 
a  priori  against  a  four-peaked  mountain 
of  evidence.  He  furnished  the  whole 
artillery  of  falsehood,  the  romantic  and 
alluring  phrases,  "  a  gift  to  the  public," 
etc.,  the  equivoques,  and  confusions  of 
ideas,  among  which  the  very  landmarks 
of  truth  are  lost  to  unguarded  men. 

Since  it  is  this  British  pettifogger  who, 
in  the  great  Republic,  stands  between  us 
and  the  truth — between  us  and  law — be- 
tween us  and  morality — between  us  and 
humanity— between  us  and  the  eighth 
commandment  of  God  the  Father — be- 
tween us  and  the  golden  rule  of  God  the 
Son,  Judge  Yates  becomes,  like  Satan, 
quite  an  important  equivocator,  and  I 
must  undeceive  mankind  about  Judge 
Yates  and  his  fitness  to  rule  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  mind. 

In  "Millar  v.  Taylor,"  the  case  that 


has  given  Judge  Yates  so  great  a  tem- 
porary importance  in  England  and 
America,  the  main  question  was  a  simple 
historical  fact :  did  copyright  in  printed 
books,  which  preceded  legislation  in 
France  and  Holland,  also  precede  in 
England  a  certain  enactment  called  Queen 
Anne's  Statute  ?  No  a  priori  reasoning 
was  needed  here.  The  Latin  jurists  used 
none  to  ascertain  the  identical  fact  in 
their  own  country,  and  therefore,  with  no 
better  evidence  than  we  have,  they  are 
unanimous.  We  are  divided  by  a  priori 
reasoning  on  fact. 

In  "Millar  v.  Taylor  "  two  modes  of 
searching  truth  encountered  each  other 
on  the  narrow  ground,  each  party  reject- 
ing the  washerwoman's  theory,  and  ad- 
mitting pure  copyright,  but  disputing 
whether  in  England  it  was  forfeited  by 
publication. 

One  method  is  by  a  priori  reasoning, 
and  was  the  method  of  the  Greek  sophists, 
and  medieval  schoolmen. 

The  other  is  by  observation,  and  evi- 
dence, and  is  the  method  of  Lord  Bacon 
and  his  pupils. 

Scholars  sometimes  permit  themselves 
to  talk  as  if  the  former  method  was  uni- 
versal in  the  ancient  world.  That  state- 
ment is  excessive.  Plain  men,  in  their 
business,  anticipated  the  Baconian  method 
thousands  of  years  ago,  as  the  jury  in 
"Millar  v.  Taylor"  followed  it.  The 
Greek  sculptors  anticipated  it,  and  their 
hands  reached  truth,  while  the  philoso- 
phers, their  contemporaries,  where  roam- 
ing after  their  will-o'-the-wisp, 

And  found  no  end  in  wandering-  mazes  lost. 

There  was  the  pity  of  it ;  those,  who, 
by  learning,  leisure,  and  ability,  were 
most  able  to  instruct  mankind,  were  en- 
ticed by  bad  example  and  the  arrogance 
of  the  intellect,  into  a  priori  reasoning, 
and  diverted  from  docile  observation ; 
and  so  they  fell  into  a  system,  that  kept 
the  sun  out  and  the  door  shut. 

The  other  system,  in  250  years,  has  en- 
lightened that  world,  which  lay  in  dark- 
ness. 

To  test  the  systems,  take  any  period  of 
400  years  before  Lord  Bacon,  and   esti- 


294 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


he  progress  of  the  world  in  knowl- 
edge and  useful  discoveries.  Then  take 
the  250  years  after  Lord  Bacon.  I  vary 
the  figures,  out  of  justice,  to  allow  for  in- 
creased population. 

Lord  Bacon  was  the  savior  of  the  human 
intellect.  He  discouraged  plausible  con- 
jecture, or  a  priori  reasoning,  and  taught 
humble,  close  observation.  Thereby  he 
gave  the  key  of  the  heavens  to  Newton, 
and  the  key  of  Nature,  and  her  fo 
the  physical  investigator,  and  the  prying 

trie.     Man   began  to  culti\  a 
humble  but  wise  faculty  of  observation  : 
by  cultivation,  and   taught   him 
how  to  wrestle  with  Nature  for 
crets,  and  extort  them.     Thi 
a  branch  of  useful  learning,  that  method 
has  not  improved  500  per  cent.    Of  course, 
even  since  Lord  Bacon,  prejudice  lias,  in 
holes  and  corners,  resisted   observation  : 
but  the  final  result  is  sure.    -1  priori  rea- 
soning bled  people  to  death  with  the  lan- 
cet   for  two  centuries  after  Bacon:   but 
Bacon    has    .  the    lancet.       A 

handful  of  Jesuits  will  tell  you  that  the 
historical  query,  whether  one  Bishop  of 
Rome  has  contradicted  another  in  faith, 
must  not  be  learned  from  contemporary 
ed  by  internal  thoughl 
a  thousand  years  afterward.  Well,  that 
medieval  crotchet  will  go,  and  Bacon 
stay.  And  so  it  must  be,  sooner  or  later, 
with  everything,  copyright  at  common 
law — the  national  expediency  of  piracy — 
the  infallibility  of  men  with  miters  — 
everything.  The  world  has  tasted 
It  will  never  eat  cobwebs  again  for  long. 

To  put  the  matter  in  another  form — 
Such  of  our  common  ancestors.  Brother 
Jonathan,  as  invented  phrases,  were  near- 
ly always  acute  observers.  They  called  a 
a  prodigal  "a  spendthrift."  having  ob- 
served how  often  that  character  dissi- 
pated the  savings  of  another  man.  A 
quarrel,  with  almost  divine  sagacity, 
they  called  not  '.'  a  difficulty,'*  which  is  a 
brainless  word,  but  a  misunderstanding, 
and  they  called  a  madman  [a  man  out  of 
his  senses.  Why  not  out  of  his  reason? 
Well,  they  had  observed.  The  madman 
who  did  not  fly  at  their  throats,  but  gave 
them  time  to  study  him,  did  nothing  but 


reason  all  day,  and  not  illogically ;  but, 
blinded  by  some  preconceived  idea,  could 
.  nor  hear,  nor  observe.  Intelli- 
gent madmen  have  busy  minds,  and  often 
argue   speciously,  but   start   from   some 

d  contradicted  by  their  senses. 
iv  the  great  gates  of  wisdom, 
and  to  the  lunatic  these  gates  are  always 
more  or  less  closed  by  prepossession. 
Not  eVents  distant  by  space  or  time  can- 
not be  seen  nor  heard  by  us,  but  by  per- 
sons present.  Where  they  get  recorded 
at  Hie  time,  the  senses  of  the  eye  wit- 
nesses have  spoken:  and  the  pupil  of 
Lord    Bacon    must    have   recourse  to  the 

■id  report  of  those  persons.  Into 
that  evidence  he  peers,  and  even  cross- 
examines  it.  if  he  can  :  and  he  can  some- 
times: for.  when  a  dead  witness  makes 
an  admission,  it  has  the  effed  and  value 
of  a  truth  extracted  from  a  living  witness 
against  his  will.  Where  contemporary 
evidence  is  abundant,  and  maniform.  it,  is 
very  reliable,  and  the  man,  who  opposes 
(i  priori  reasoning,  or  preconceived  ideas, 

to      it.      IS      A      LUNATIC       IN     THE      SECOND 

I  feel  that  I  am  giving  a  Large  key  to 
unlock  a  small  box;  but  small  keys  have 
failed;  and  Cicero  says  well,  "  Errare, 
falli.  labi.  tarn  turpe  est  quam  decipi." 
1  will,  therefore,  in  my  next  give  The  Ba- 
conian method  v.  the  method  of  the  an- 
cients, or  Millar  v.  Taylor,  showing  how 
an    English    judge    proved,    out    of    the 

of  his  inner  consciousness,  that 
copyright  at  common  law  could  not  have 
existed,  even  as  a  waggish  Oxford  pro- 
fessor proved,  by  the  same  method,  that 

■a  Bonaparte  could  never  have 
existed.  Charles  Reade. 


SEVENTH  LETTER. 

Sir — The  poet  Thomson,  in  1729,  as- 
signed the  copyright  of  ••The  Seasons" 
to  Millar,  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever. 
In  1763  Taylor  printed  "The  Seasons'' 
and   Millar  sued  him  :  the  case,  as  ban- 


READIANA. 


295 


died,  turned  mainly  on  whether  copy- 
right in  printed  books  was  before  Queen 
Anne's  statute.  This  being-  a  mixed 
question  of  law  and  fact,  the  opinion  of 
the  jury  was  taken  upon  documentary 
evidence,  the  records  of  Stationers'  Hall, 
anil  many  ancient  assignments  of  copy- 
right drawn  up  by  lawyers  long  before 
the  statute,  and  others  long  after  it. 
The  defendant  had  powerful  counsel ;  so 
this  evidence  doubtless  was  sifted,  and 
kept  within  the  rules.  The  jury  brought 
a  special  verdict,  in  which  are  these 
words — "And  the  said  jurors,  upon  their 
oath,  further  say  that  before  the  reign 
of  her  majesty  Queen  Anne,  it  was  usual 
to  purchase  from  authors  the  perpetual 
copyright  of  their  books,  and  assign  the 
same  for  valuable  considerations,  and  to 
make  the  same  the  subject  of  family  set- 
tlements." The  jury  here  were  within  their 
province ;  they  swore  not  to  a  matter  of 
law,  but  to  a  custom,  in  which,  however, 
lawyers  at  different  epochs  had  taken  a 
part  b}7  drawing  the  legal  assignments. 
Most  of  this  evidence  has  melted  away. 
but  the  sworn  verdict  of  twelve  unpreju- 
diced men  of  the  world  remains,  and,  by 
the  law  of  England  and  America,  over- 
powers and  indeed  annuls,  all  judicial 
conjectures  in  this  one  matter  of  fact. 
On  this  basis  the  judges  discussed  the 
law,  and  Lord  Mansfield,  Mr.  Justice 
Willes,  and,  above  all,  Mr.  Justice  Aston, 
uttered  masterpieces  of  learning,  wisdom, 
close  reasoning,  and  common  sense,  that 
the  instructors  of  youth  in  Harvard,  Ox- 
ford, etc.,  would  do  well  to  rescue  from 
their  dusty  niche,  and  make  them  teach- 
ers of  logic,  law.  and  morals,  in  universi- 
ties and  schools  They  built  on  all  the 
rocks :  1st,  on  the  voice  of  conscience ; 
on  Meum  and  Tuum ;  on  the  sanctity  of 
productive  labor  ;  on  the  title  of  laborer 
A  to  the  fruits  of  A's  labor,  and  the 
primd  facie  absence  of  a  title  in  B  to 
the  fruits  of  A*s  labor  without  a  just 
equivalent.  2d,  on  the  universal  admis- 
sion that  an  author  alone  has  a  right  to 
print  his  written  words,  and  on  the  legal 
consequence  that  by  exercising-  this  sole 
right  and  creating  a  large  material  prop- 
erty under  it,  he  keeps   the  right  alive, 


not  dissolves  it,  since  common  law  abhors 
divestiture  of  an  admitted  right,  and 
loss  of  property  created  by  invitation  of 
law. 

From  these  principles  they  went, 
3dly,  to  special  evidence,  and  traced  the 
history  of  the  exclusive  right  to  print  pub- 
lished books ;  showed  it  at  a  remote 
period  called  by  the  very  technical  and 
leg-al  name  the  statute  adopted  centuries 
later ;  proved  the  recognition  of  this  right 
by  name  in  proclamations  and  decrees, 
and  Republican  ordinances,  and  three  par- 
liamentary licensing  Acts  under  three  dif- 
ferent sovereigns  prior  to  Queen  Anne's 
statute ;  the  entire  absence  of  dissent  in 
the  old  judges,  and  their  uniform  concur- 
rence when  speak  they  did:  their  dicta 
in  re,  and  their  obiter  dicta. — as  that 
"the  statute  of  Charles  II.  did  not  give 
the  right  (copyright),  but  the  action  :" 
and  ••  of  making  title  to  a  copyright," 
and  of  "  a  copy  "  being  a  property  para- 
mount to  the  king's  g-rant,  and  so  on — 
and  then  they  cited  law  cases  in  a  series, 
beginning  with  "Roper  v.  Streater,"long 
before  the  statute,  and  continued  in 
equity  long  after  the  statute  upon  titles 
created  long  before  the  statute,  as  "Eyre 
v.  Walker,'*  where  the  assignment  of  the 
copyright  was  in  writing  dated  165*7,  and 
"Tonson  v.  Walker,"  where  the  assign- 
ment (Milton's  "Paradise  Lost")  was 
dated  1667:  "  Motte  v.  Falkner."  etc. 
They  also  cited  the  preamble,  or  histori- 
cal preface,  of  the  statute  itself,  and 
other  matters.  This  reveals  the  Baconian 
method,  and  the  true  legal  method, 
which  goes  by  principles  resting  on  large 
induction,  and  applicable  to  all  citizens, 
impartially  ;  and  by  the  best  direct  evi- 
dence accessible.  Against  the  Washer- 
woman's theory  they  cited  "Pope  v. 
Curl,"  and  "Queensbury  v.  Shebbeare." 
Judg-e  Yates  accepted,  though  rather  sul- 
lenly, "Pope  v.  Curl,"  and  "Queensbury 
v.  Shebbeare,"  and,  in  stating  his  own 
theory,  foreswore  the  washerwoman.  He 
admitted  that,  before  tiie  statute,  if  any 
person  printed  an  author's  words  without 
his  express  consent  to  print  them,  he 
acted  unlawfully,  although  he  came  by 
them  by  legal  means,  as  by  loan  or  devo- 


296 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


lution.  The  word  "devolution"  he  used 
expressly  to  keep  within  "Queensbury  v. 
Shebbeare"  (4  Burroughs,  2379). 

But  from  that  point  he  parted  com- 
pany with  the  judges  and  the  jury,  and 
undertook  to  prove,  out  of  the  depths  of 
his  inner  consciousness,  that  the  incor- 
poreal right,  which  in  "  Queensberry  v. 
Shebbeare,"  prevailed  againsl  sixty 
years'  lawful  possession  of  a  written 
copy,  could  not  possibly  have  continued 
against  five  minutes'  lawful  possession 
of  a  printed  copy: — (risum  teneatis, 
amid.) 

Yules. — "Goods  must  be  capable  of 
possession,  and  have  some  visible  sub- 
stance:  for.  without  that,  nothing  is 
capable  of  actual  possession."  "Noth- 
ing can  be  an  objecl  of  property  which 
has  not  a  corporeal  substance,"  etc.  This 
proposition  repeated  about  six  tin 

•■  The  am hor's  unpublished  manuscript 
is  corporeal.  Bui  after  publication  by 
the  true  proprietor,  the  mere  intellect- 
ual ideas  iii  a  book  are  totally  incor- 
poreal, and  therefore  incapable  of  any 
distind  separate  possession:  li- 
ned her  We  " seized,  forfeited,  nor  pos- 
sessed, etc.,"  and  this  discovery  he  re- 
peated often,  and  rang  the  changes. 
"Can  the  sentiments  themselves,  apart 
from  the  paper,  be  taken  in  execution  for 
adebt?  Incase  df  treason,  can  they  tie 
forfeited  ?  If  they  cannot  bi 
sole  right  of  publishing  them  cannot  be 
confined  to  the  author.  There  ran  be  no 
property  where  there  can  be  no  forfeit- 
ure." etc..  etc. 

Behold  the  lunatic  inthesecond  degreeJ 
His  senses,  if  he  had  not  been  oul  of 
them,  revealed  that  copyrighl  in  printed 
books  existed  by  law  while  lie  spoke,  and 
yet  that  ideas  were  incorporeal  and  could 
not  be  seized  nor  forfeited  ;  nor  the 
sentiments  taken  in  execution.  The  nat- 
ure of  ideas  throughout  creation  was  the 
same  before  and  after  Queen  Anne's  little 
trumpery  statute  :  yet  here  is  a  lunatic 
in  the  second  degree,  who  either  says 
Queen  Anne's  Parliament  had  repealed 
God  Almighty  in  this  particular,  or  says 
nothing  at  all :  for  the  sole  point  in  dis- 


pute is,  Did  copyright  in  printed  books 
exist  among  English  human  beings, 
before  Queen  Anne's  statute,  as  it  did 
among  French  human  beings,  before 
any  special  enactment — or  did  it  exist  in 
written  works  only  ?  Who  but  a  lunatic 
in  the  second  degree  cannot  see  that  t  lie 
sole  right  of  printing  unpublished  ideas, 
is  the  very  same  property  in  the  ideas  as 
the  sole  right  of  reprinting  the  same 
ideas,  and  that  all  publication  can  do  is 
to  let  in  anoi  her  claimani  to  the  right  of 
printing,  viz.,  the  public  purchaser. 

As  to  all  his  •■  galimat  ias  "  t  here  can 
be  no  property  detached  from  a  visible 
substance — the  fool  has  gone  and  blun- 
dered into  THE  WASHERWOMAN'S  THEORY, 
and  blundered  out  of  t  he  insane  sophist  's. 
The  insane  sophist  began  with  disown- 
in:.''  the  washerwoman.     She,  poor  w  retell, 

is  contradicted  not  only  by  "Roper  v. 
Streater."  but  by  "Queensberry  v.  Sheb- 
beare," and  "Pope  v.  Curl."  the  cases 
Fates  admits.     But  Lord   Mansfle 

hired    the    insane    sophist     and     would-be 

washerwoman  on  this,  and  literally  pul- 
verized his  washerw an's  twaddle,  with 

fifteen  sledge-hammer  sentences  begin- 
ning thus :—"  It  lias  all  along  been  ex- 
pressly admit  t  ed."  a  nd  ending  '•under  a 
commiss  on  of  bankruptcy." 

I  do  not  cite  the  pulverizing  para- 
graphs, because  there  is  no  need.  Yates's 
attempt  to  smuggle  in  the  washerwo- 
man's theory   under   the   insane  sophist's 

is  self-evident,  and  has  failed  utterly;  for 
to  "Pope  v.  Curl."  and  ••  Queensberry  v. 

Shebbeare."  are  since  added  "  Macklin    V. 

Richardson,"  and  "Palmer  v.  De  Witt," 
both  death-blows  to  the  washerwoman's 
theory.  rainier  v.  De  Witt. — Robert- 
son. English  dramatist,  wrote  a  comedj  . 
."  and  played  it  all  over  England, 
but  did  not  publish.  He  assigned  the 
copyright,  and  stage-right,  at  common 
law.  to  Palmer,  an  American  citizen.  De 
Witt  published  "Caste"  in  New  York. 
Palmer  sued  him,  and  the  case  was  set- 
tled, by  judgment  for  Palmer,  who  was. 
in  law,  the  English  author.  (New  York- 
Court  of  Appeals,  Feb.  27,  1872.)  The 
judgment  lies  before  me.  There  was  no 
violation    whatever  of    the    manuscript. 


READIANA. 


297 


Nothing'  was  misappropriated  but  the 
linked  right  to  print  and  publish  a  corn. 
position,  to  which  enormous  publicity  lias 
been  given  by  twenty  prompt  copies  and 
fifty  sets  of  parts,  and  representation  in 
fifty  theaters  at  least.  Therefore  this 
American  court  of  very  high  authority 
has  gone  with  Lord  Mansfield,  and  other 
great  lawyers,  and  swept  the  very  main- 
stay of  Judge  Yates's  sophistry  away 
forever. 

This  narrows  the  question  to  forfeiture, 
or  non-forfeiture,  by  publication,  of  copy- 
right at  common  law.  Now  this  soi- 
clisant  forfeiture,  Queen  Anne's  Parlia- 
ment treat,  in  the  preamble,  or  historical 
prelude,  as  a  malpractice,  a  violation  of 
property  ;  they  say  it  is  unjust — cruel — 
and  neiv  ;  which  is  prestatutory  evidence 
in  the  statute  itself.  Yates  gives  Queen 
Anne's  Parliament  the  lie,  and  under- 
takes to  prove,  out  of  the  depths  of  his 
inner  consciousness,  that  this  malpractice 
was — at  the  very  moment  when  Parlia- 
ment denounced  it,  and  prepared,  in  imi- 
tation of  preceding  Acts,  to  punish  it  as 
a  misdemeanor — just,  reasonable,  and 
old.  Having  set  this  very  Parliament 
above  the  Creator,  he  now  sets  it  below 
Yates.  However,  his  argument  runs 
thus :  he  says  that  we  authors  put  for- 
ward ideas  and  sentiments,  as  the  direct 
object  of  property  at  common  law  in  old 
times,  and  insult  common  sense  and  jus- 
tice in  pretending  that  we  could  publish 
our  ideas,  yet  reserve  the  right  of  print- 
ing those  ideas  for  publication.  This  is 
plausible,  and  paves  the  way  for  his 
romantic  phrases  that  have  intoxicated 
ordinary  minds,  such  as  "the  act  of  pub- 
lication, when  voluntarily  done  by  the 
author  himself,  is  virtually  and  neces- 
sarily a  gift  to  the  public.'"  Then  hand- 
ling it  no  longer  as  a  donation  but  under 
the  head  of  implied  contracts,  which  is  a 
much  sounder  view  of  the  author's  sale 
to  the  public  purchaser,  he  says,  neatly 
enough,  the  seller  delivers  it  without  re- 
striction, and  the  buyer  receives  it  with- 
out stipulation.  Then  he  jumps  to  this 
droll  inference  :  "Nothing  less  than  leg- 
islative power  can  restrain  the  use  of 
anything."     This,   however,  is  a   purehy 


chimerical  distinction ;  the  common  law 
was  founded  partly  on  Royal  statutes, 
largely  conceived,  and  resembling  max- 
ims ;  and  limited  uses  are  not  altog-ether 
unknown  to  it;  every  river  is  a  highway, 
over  which  the  public  can  pass,  and  even 
bathe  in  it,  without  infringing  property ; 
but  not  always  fish ;  and  a  right  of 
way  obtained  by  use,  or  leased  to  the 
churchwardens,  under  which  the  public 
can  lead  its  cow  across  a  freeholder's 
field,  gives  no  right  to  graze  her  upon 
the  path ;  and,  if  I  let  the  public  into 
my  tea-garden  at  sixpence  a  head  to  eat 
all  the  fruit  they  can,  no  express  stipula. 
tion  is  required  to  reserve  the  fruit  trees. 
Moreover,  Yates's  position  is  too  wide; 
it  lets  in  other  nations  ;  now  the  French 
and  Dutch  common  law  give  it  the  lie 
direct  in  copyright  itself ;  so,  if  we  must 
reason  a  priori,  the  chances  are  fifty  to 
one  the  English  common  law  gave  it  the 
lie  too. 

But  this  is  our  direct  reply— for  the 
multiplying  power  of  the  press  is  so 
unique,  it  excludes  all  close  comparisons 
— so  far  from  claiming  a  property  in 
ideas,  that  is  the  very  thing  the  holders 
of  copj^right  at  common  law  did  not 
claim.  That  is  the  claim  of  the  patentees 
alone,  as  I  shall  show  in  the  proper  place. 

So  far  from  ideas  becoming  incorporeal 
after  publication,  etc.,  which  statement 
of  Yates's  is  a  "  galimatias,"  and  an 
idiotic  confusion,  ideas  are  incorporeal 
only  at  a  period  long  antecedent  to  pub- 
lication— viz.,  while  the}1-  lie  in  the  au- 
thor's mind. 

An  author  connects  his  ideas  with  mat- 
ter once,  and  forever,  when  he  embodies 
them  in  a  labored  sequence  of  words 
marked  by  his  hand  on  paper.  These 
wrritten  words  are  matter,  by  collocation, 
labored  sequence,  and  the  physical  strokes 
of  a  pen  with  a  black  unguent ;  matter, 
as  distinct  from  the  paper  as  gas  is  from 
the  pipe,  and,  though  they  convey  men- 
tal ideas,  the  written  words  themselves 
are  not  so  fine  a  material  as  gas,  which 
yet  is  measured  and.  sold  by  the  foot.  ' 
The  phrase  "intellectual  labor"  is  an 
equivoque  and  a  snare  that  has  deluded 
ten  thousand   minds.     It    applies    some- 


298 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


what  loosely  to  study ;  but  an  author's 
productive  labor  is  only  one  species  of 
skilled  labor  ;  it  is  physical,  plus  intellec- 
tual, labor,  and  those  compositions  which 
led  to  common-law  rights  were  the  re- 
sult of  long',  keen  labor,  intellectual  and 
physical,  proved  to  be  physical  by  the 
vast  time  occupied — whereas  though!  is 
instantaneous— and  by  shortening  the  life 
of  the  author's  body,  through  its 
on  the  blood  vessels  of  the  brain,  which 
are  a  part,  not  of  the  mind  but  of  the 
body.  The  said  vessels  get  worn 
author's  productive  Labor,  and  give  way. 
Tins,  even  in  our  short  experience,  has 
killed  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  perhaps 
Lytton.  The  shorl  life  of  aul 
general  is  established  by  statistics.  See 
Neison's  "Vital  Statist 

The  words  are  the  material  /chicle  of 
is  :  Hi,,  paper  is  the  material  ve- 
hicle Of  the  WOl 

The  author  has.  by  admission  of  Yates. 
the  sole  right  to  do  as  follows,  and  does 
it: — He  takes  the  written  words,  which 
his  ideas,  to  the  print- 
ing compositor,  and  the  compositor  takes 
printed  letters  identical  with  the  author's, 
though  differing  a  little  in  shape — but 
that  is  a  mere  incidenl  of  the  day  :  in  the 
infancy  of  printing  they  were  id  ntical  in 
shape,  only  worse  formed — he  sets  the 
letters  in  forms,  and  passes  them  to  the 
pressman.  For  this  the  compositor 
charges  say  628.  With  the  pressman, 
and  not  with  the  eomposit or.  who  is  a 
copyist  for  the  Press,  begins  the  Press. 
Now  comes  the  mechanical  miracle  which 
made  copyright  necessary  and  inevit  able  ; 
the  Press  can  apply  different  si 
the  same  metal  letters  conveying  the  com- 
position :  thus  a  thousand  different  paper 
volumes  are  created  in  which  the  letters 
and  the  author's  composition  are  one, 
but  the  volumes  of  paper  a  thousand. 
The  volumes  are  now  ready,  but  not  is- 
sued :  and  I  beg  particular  attention  to 
the  author's  admitted  position  at  com- 
mon law  one  moment  before  publication. 
He  has  still,  by  law  (Yates  assenting), 
the  sole  right  to  print,  and  publish  ;  he 
has  created,  for  sale,  a  thousand  volumes, 
under  an  exclusive  legal  right  to   create 


volumes  for  sale  :  he  has  added  to  his 
original  legal  right  three  equities  : — 1st, 
priority  of  printing,  which  is  nothing 
against  a  legal  title,  but  something 
against  a  rhapsodical  title:  2d,  the 
peculiar  expense  of  setting  type  from 
written  words:  3d,  occupancy:  and 
the  equitable  right  to  sell  again  the 
thousand  volumes,  a  large  material  prop- 
erty created  under  an  exclusive  legal 
title  founded  on  morality  and  universal 
law,  and  conceded  by  Judge  Yates.  For 
the  force  of  occupancy  added  to  title, 
see    Law.   passim ;  and  for  the  fi 

ove  special  equity,  see  "Sweet  r. 
Cator." 

Well,  the  man  in  possession  of  the 
legal  right,  and  also  of  the  additional 
equities,  and  also  of  the  material  volumes, 
now  does  a  proper  and  rational  act,  by 
which  the  public  profits  confessedly,  an 
act  such  as  no  man  was  ever  lawfully 
punished  for;  he  publishes,  or  sets  in  cir- 
culation, his  one  composition  contained 
in    many    paper    vehicles,      lie   sells    each 

volume  say  for  six  shillings  to  the  trade, 
eight  .shillings  to  the  public  reader.  What, 
he  intends  to  sell  to  the  public  reader  for 
eight  shillings,  is — paper  and  binding, 
two  shillings;  printers' work,  sixpence; 
useful  or  entertaining  knowledge,  alias 
his  own  labor,  four  shillings;  the  right  of 

he  ideas  in  many  v. 
plagiarizing  and  printing  them  re-worded, 
_  it  of  selling  again  t  he 
very  thing  the  purchaser  bought — the 
one  material  volume  with  its  men 
tents.  Prima  facie,  the  contract,  so  un- 
derstood, is  not  an  unjust  one  to  the 
buyer,  nor  an  extortionate  one  for  the 
seller.  His  profit,  on  these  terms,  does 
not  approach  the  retail  trader's,  who,  in 
practice,  is  the  seller  to  the  public,  yet  for- 
feits nothing  by  the  sale.  Now-  it  is  a 
maxim  of  the  common  law,  that  where 
two  interpretations  of  a  contract,  ex- 
pressed or  implied,  are  possible,  one  that 
gives  no  great  advantage  to  either  party, 
and  the  other  that  gives  a  monstrous 
advantage  to  one  party,  the  fairer  inter- 
pretation is  to  be  preferred,  since  men, 
meeting  in  business,  are  presumed  by  the 
law  to  exchange  equivalents  :    and  this 


BEAD! AX  A. 


299 


rule,  established  b}-  cases,  applies  espe- 
cially where  a  whole  class  of  contracts  is 
to  be  interpreted.  Please  observe  that 
the  ground  I  am  upon,  viz.,  of  implied  con- 
tracts, was  selected  by  Yates,  and  I  ask 
which  interpretation,  Yates's  or  ours, 
agrees  with  the  undisputed  common-law 
doctrine  of  equivalents  ? 

The  purchase  of  books  is  a  lottery. 
But  there  are  a  host  of  prizes.  Lord 
Bacon's  works  gave  the  public  purchas- 
er a  great  deal  more  than  a  thousand 
million  pounds'  worth  of  knowledge  and 
power ;  yet  he  made  no  extra  charge  to 
justify  a  claim  on  his  copyright  founded 
on  purchase  of  his  volumes.  The  great 
books  balance  the  little  :  and  the  buyer 
has  the  choice.  Colonel  Gardiner  was 
converted  in  an  afternoon,  from  vicious 
courses,  not  by  a  vision,  but  a  duodecimo  ; 
and  that  is  a  fact  attested  b3T  Jupiter 
Carlyle. — I  didn't  find  it  in  my  intestines, 
where  Yates  looks  for  facts.  Many  men, 
about  the  very  time  of  "  Millar  v.  Tay- 
lor," ascribed  the  salvation  of  their  souls 
to  a  copy  of  Doddridge's  "  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress of  Religion  in  the  Soul."  If  a  pupil 
of  Yates,  before  purchase  of  Doddridge, 
that  would  be  a  great  improvement  in  a 
reader's  prospects  —  for  8s.  Besides, 
after  he  has  been  converted  from 
Yates's  reading  of  the  8th  of  Anne,  to 
Doddridge's  reading  of  the  8th  of 
Moses,  and  his  soul  saved,  etc.,  he  can 
lend  or  sell  the  volume.  Then  why  pil- 
lage Doddridge  for  un-Yatesing  him,  and 
saving  his  soul  dirt  cheap  ?  Find  me  the 
party  to  any  other  contract,  who  can  eat 
his  cake,  yet  sell  it  afterward,  like  the 
honest  purchaser  of  a  good  volume. 

Charles  Reade. 


EIGHTH  LETTEB. 

Sir — The  next  intellectual  article  the 
insane  sophist  opposes  to  evidence  is 
vituperation,  or  mendacity  trading  upon 
popular  prejudice.  "  It  is  a  monopoly 
opposed  to  the  great  laws  of  property," 


etc.,  repeated  ten  times.  Now  gauge 
his  logic.  He  says  :  1.  The  sole  right  of 
printing  a  man's  own  composition  is  a 
perpetual  property  at  common  law.  2. 
If  the  proprietor  exerts  that  perpetual 
right  lawfully,  to  the  benefit  of  himself 
and  the  community,  and  law-,  mistaking 
him  for  a  felon,  divests  him  of  it.  the 
g-ood  citizen  forfeits  his  property.  3.  If 
law  declines  to  abjure  its  abhorrence  of 
forfeitures,  and  does  not  divest  him  of 
his  sacred  property,  the  sacred  property 
becomes  monopoly .  How?  by  bare  re- 
tention ?  by  non-forfeiture  ?  by  continu- 
ation ?  Did  ever  continuation  or  non-for- 
feiture of  a  property  metamorphose  that 
property  into  a  monopoly  ?  So  then  if 
my  hen  and  her  chickens  run  upon  a 
common,  and  law,  having-  imbibed  a 
spite  against  feathered  property,  lets  the 
public  in  to  scramble  for  them,  I  can 
scramble  with  the  lot,  but  lose  pay  prop- 
erty in  my  hen  and  chickens.  But  if 
law  declares  they  are  mine  still,  though 
my  blind  confidence  has  made  it  very 
easy  to  pirate  them,  then  my  property 
in  my  hen  and  my  chickens  becomes  a 
monopoly — which  word  means  the  sole 
right  to  sell  any  hens  or  any  chickens 
whatever.  Is  this  a  lunatic,  or  a  liar  ? — 
or  both  ? 

I  have  no  theory  of  my  own  about  mo- 
nopoly :  I  merely  appfy  settled  truths  that 
idiots  repeat  like  cuckoos  but  cannot  ap- 
ply. Monopoly  is  defined  in  the  law 
books,  and  justly  defined,  to  be  "an  ex- 
clusive right  to  sell  any  species  of  mer- 
chandise " —  ''genus  quoddam  merca- 
turse." 

Property  is  a  wider  right  over  a  nar- 
rower object.  It  is  the  sole  right  of  keep- 
ing, destroying-,  leasing,  or  selling,  not  a 
species  of  merchandise,  but  only  that 
individual  specimen  of  merchandise,  or 
those  individual  specimens,  which  happen 
to  be  the  man's  own  by  law.  One  well- 
known  historical  feature  of  monopoly  is 
that  it  was  the  creature  of  Royal  pre- 
rogative ;  another  that  it  has  always 
clashed  in  trade  with  undoubted  prop- 
erty. In  this  kingdom  are  now  no  liter- 
ary monopolies,  but  there  is  one  dramatic 
monopoly,  viz.,  the  exclusive  right  of  the 


300 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


licensed  managers  to  represent  any  play 
whatever — yours,  mine,  or  theirs  (6  and  ; 
Victoria).  But  literary  monopolies  in- 
fested the  ages  Anachronist  Yates  mis- 
represents ;  and  those  men  of  the  com- 
mon law  he  underrates — and  they  were 
great  masters  of  logic  compared  with 
him — always  called  them  by  their  righl 
name,  "  Patents."  Under  Henry  VIII., 
one  Saxton  had  the  sole  right  to  sell 
printed  maps  and  charts,  and.  under 
Elizabeth,  Tallis  and  Bird,  to  sell  music. 
Both  were  vetoes  on  a  species — nature, 
monopoly — name,  a  patent — root,  pre- 
e.  The  owners  of  copyright 
groaned  publicly,  again  and  again,  under 
these  infractions  of  their  property  by 
prerogative  patents;  and,  after  the  sec- 
ond revolution,  when  prerogative  was 
staggering  under  repeated  blows,  liter- 
ary property,  or  copyright,  took  a  lit- 
erary patent,  or  monopoly  boldly  by  the 
throat,  in  "  Eloper  v.  Streater."  Streater, 
lute  patentee,  had.  from  the  Crown,  the 
sole  righl  to  sell  law  reports  by  whom- 
writtt  a.     This  poly — an 

exclusive  right  to  sell  a  species  of  liter- 
ary composition.  Roper  bought  of  Judge 
Croke's  executor  the  copyright  or  sole 
right  to  reprint  Judge  Croke's  reports, 
and  line  his  trunk  with  t hem  or  sell  them 
— which  is  property. 

And  this  muddle-head  Yates  could  look 
with   his  moon-ca  >'    "Roper  v. 

Streater,"  yet  call  literary  property  in 
a  man's  own  (by  purchase)  printed  com- 
position, a  monopoly,  even  when  he  saw 
literary  monopoly  and  literary  property 
cheek  by  jowl  in  a  court  of  law — fight  ing 
each  other  as  rival  suitors — and  the  mo- 
nopoly in  a  sjjecies  of  books  declaring  its 
nature,  its  distinctive  title.  "  patent."  and 
its  root  in  prerogative;  and  the  literary 
property  declaring  its  nature,  its  dis- 
tinctive title,  copyright,  and  its  root  in 
common  law.  So  that,  in  "Roper  v. 
Streater."  the  plaintiff  gives  Yates  the 
lie  on  behalf  of  property:  the  defendant 
gives  him  the  lie  on  behalf  of  monopoly  ; 
and  the  judges  give  him  the  lie  in  the 
name  of  the  common  law,  when  he  calls 
copyright  in  a  man's  own  printed  book 
"  a  monopoly  contrary  to  the  great  laics 


of  property."  In  my  very  first  letter  I 
offered  the  statesmen  and  lawyers  Yates 
has  gulled  with  this  fallacy  a  bet  of  £150 
to  £50  a  man's  copyright  in  his  own 
printed  book  is  property,  and  not  mo- 
nopoly ;  yet  of  all  the  men  who  are  so 
ready  to  swindle  authors  at  home  and 
abroad  out  of  a  million  pounds  by  means 
of  this  pettifogger's  lie,  not  one  has  had 
the  honesty  nor  the  manhood  to  risk  £50 
of  his  own  against  £150  of  an  author's, 
upon  the-lie.  I  hope  the  world  will  see 
through  this,  and  loathe  it.  and  despise 
1  do. 
To  sum  up  the  bag  of  moonshine — To 
any  man  who  has  nvul  history  at  us 
Mansfield  and  Blackstone 
did,  Yates's  whole  picture  of  old  En- 
gland is  like  an  historical  novel  written 
by  an  unlettered  girl,  she  undertakes, 
like  lam.  1.,  present  antiquity;  and  what 
she  does  portray  is  the  little  bit  of  her 
own  age  she  has  picked  up.  its  thoughts 
and  phrases.      Under  the  Tudors  and  the 

S1  tarts  her  characters  are  impregnated 
with  modern  views  of  liberty,  and  rhap- 
sodize   accordingly:    they    nave   even    a 

smattering  of  "pi  on y  "  and 

let  you  know  it  :  and  they  say  "the  Sab- 
bath " — •'  illusions  " — "developments  " — 
"to  burke  an  inquiry  " — "  the  fact  of  my 
being  so  and  -,,."  meaning  "  t  lie  circum- 
stance of  my  being  so  and  so." — and  her 
counsel  address  the  jury  for  a  criminal, 
and  you  may  thank  your  stars  if  Lady 
Jane  Grey  does  not  lay  down  her  Longi- 
QUS  (of  whom  there  was  not  a  copy  m 
tic  kingdom)  and  waltz  with  the  Spanish 
dor.  The  sentiments  and  the 
phrases  Judge  Yates  ascribes  to  men 
under  the  Tudors,  the  Stuarts,  the  Com- 
monwealth, and  the  Dutchman,  are  all 
pure  anachronisms  quite  as  barefaced  to 
any  scholar  as  those  in  a  virgin's  novel. 
Old  England  never  personified  "the  pub- 
lic," as  Yates  fancies  it  did,  and  "Fur 
Publicola,"  or  the  patriot  thief  of  copy- 
right, was  yet  unborn.  The  men  who 
built  seven  gables  to  one  house,  and 
breakfasted  on  ale,  had  no  such  extrava- 
gant anticipations  of  liberty  as  to  despoil 
private  property  in  its  sacred  name.  In- 
deed "copy"  was  a   word  oftener  used 


READIANA. 


301 


than  "liberty,"  under  James  I.,  and  even 
when  liberty  began  to  struggle,  it  was 
against  power  in  high  places,  not  prop- 
erty in  low  ones.  It  cut  down  preroga- 
tives ;  it  did  not  run  away  with  fig-trees 
because  the  proprietor  sold  it  the  figs. 
The  tall  talk,  the  bombastical  mendacity, 
"publication  of  a  volume  being  a  gift  of 
the  copyright  to  the  public" — "a  prop- 
erty in  ideas,"  etc.,  all  this  rhapsodical 
rubbish  emanated  from  romantic  petti- 
foggers, gilding  theft,  at  a  known  date — 
namely,  between  1740  and  1765 — and  the 
ideas  were  not  a  month  older  than  the 
varnish,  for  they  were  all  invented,  not 
by  judges,  but  by  counsel  for  the  defense 
of  post-statutory  piracies.  Find  me  this 
slip-slop  defiling  the  mouths  of  the  old 
judges. 

So  much  for  &  priori,  reasoning  against 
evidence.  What  else  was  to  be  expected  ? 
The  system  of  reasoning  that  kept  the 
world  dark  for  ages,  it  would  be  odd  in- 
deed if  that  system  could  not  darken  a 
single  subject,  and  turn  so  small  a  thing 
as  a  pettifogging  judge  into  so  common  a 
thing  as  a  lunatic. 

The  Baconian  Method  v.  the  Method 
op  the  Dark  Ages. 

[  Evidence  on  one  line  may  mislead  :  but 
concurrent  evidence — never.  By  concur- 
rent evidence  I  mean  veins  of  evidence 
starting  from  different  points,  but  con- 
verging- to  one  center.  Three  distinct 
coincidences  pointing  to  one  man  as  a 
murderer  have  always  hanged  him  in  my 
day.  I  have  many  examples  noted.  Al- 
most the  greatest  concurrence  of  hetero- 
geneous evidence  on  any  historical  fact 
ivhatever,  is  that  which  proves  copyright 
at  law  in  printed  books  before  Queen 
Anne  ;  which  also  proves  an  Englishman 
has  full  copyright  in  the  United  States. . 

First  let  me  ask — What  is  a  word  ? 
The  insane  sophists  seem  to  fancy  it  is  a 
thing,  or  else  air.  It  is  neither.  It  is  de- 
fined, and  justly,  by  the  logicians,  "the 
current  sign  of  an  established  thing."  It 
can  never  precede  the  thing  signified.  We 
all  know  the  work-making  process;  for 
we  have  all  seen  it.  There  was  no  word 
more   wanted   than    "telegram,"   yet  it 


was  not  coined  till  years  after  the  thing 
signified.  I  saw  the  verb  "to  burke" 
created.  It  wTas  coined  about  six  months 
after  Burke,  who  smothered  folk  for  the 
anatomists,  was  hanged  ;  but  it  took  years 
to  penetrate  the  kingdom.  When  a  word 
gets  to  be  used  by  different  classes,  gov- 
erning and  governed,  that  is  the  voice  of 
the  nation,  and  its  currencj7  shows  the 
thing  to  be  full-blown  and  long-estab- 
lished. It  is  simply  idiotic  to  look,  with 
moon-calf  eye,  at  an  ancient  popular  word, 
and  bay  the  moon  with  conjectures  that 
no  ancient  thing  was  signified. 

Heads  of  the  evidence  against  forfeiture 
of  copj'right  by  publication. 

1.  The  word  "copy"  from  the  Tudor 
princes  to  Queen  Anne's  statute,  and  in 
the  statute,  and  after  the  statute,  always 
used  to  signify  the  sole  right  of  printing 
before  and  after  publication.  That  alone 
bars  Yates's  theory  that  publication  dis- 
solves the  property. 

2.  The  ancient  use  of  this  technical 
word  in  disconnected  things  and  places, 
yet  always  to  denote  property  and  occu- 
pation. Example  ^4. — Entries  of  sales 
and  transfers  of  copyright,  from  155S  to 
1709,  at  Stationers'  Hall,  by  occupiers. 
Proviso  in  1582  that,  where  the  king  had 
licensed  any  individual  to  print,  the  license 
should  nevertheless  be  void,  if  the  copy- 
right belonged  to  another.  B. — -Recogni- 
tion of  "copy"  as  property  in  Acts  of 
the  Star  Chamber,  and  Republican  ordi- 
nances, both  valid  as  historical  evidence, 
and  in  the  licensing  Acts  of  Parliament 
13  and  14  Charles  II.,  1  James  II.,  c.  7,  4 
William  and  Mary,  c.  24,  which  are  evi- 
dence, and  something  more,  since,  in  all 
these,  Royal  Parliaments,  having  the 
same  power  as  Queen  Anne's,  protected, 
by  severe  penalties,  that  very  property 
at  law  in  published  books  which  Yates 
divines  out  of  his  inside  had  expired  by 
publication.  Either  these  licensing  Acts 
were  copyright  Acts — which  is  absurd — 
or  they  protected  copyright  as  it  existed 
forever  at  common  law.  Here  "copy," 
or  "copyright,"  might  very  well  imitate 
Des  Cartes,  and  say,  "  Protegor  ;  ergo 
sum."  C. — Use  of  the  old  word  "  copy," 
in  Queen  Anne's  statute.     The  first  stat- 


302 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


ute  on  any  matter  is  written  under  the 
common  law.  Even  this  truism  has  es- 
caped the  babblers  on  copyright.  In  Queen 
Anne's  Act,  the  word  "  copy  "  is  used  six 
times  in  its  common-law  sense;  and  it  is 
first  applied,  viz.,  in  sect.  1,  not  to  manu- 
scripts on  the  eve  of  publication,  but  to 
printed  books;  and  the  preference  antiq- 
uity had  for  the  printed  book  over  the 
MS.  is  here  continued;  twenty-one  years 
the  minimum  term  to  a  published  book, 
fourteen  to  a  MS.  on  the  eve  of  put 
tion.  Is  that  how  Yates  talks  about  the 
MS.  and  the  book?  D. — Recognition  of 
the  word,  and  thing,  in  business.  Public 
and  notorious  sales  of  ancienl  copj  rights, 
some  of  them  famous:  "The  V* 
Duty  of  Man  ; "  Dryden's  copyrights, 
bol  h  dramatic,  and  epic :  Milton's, 
Southern's,  Rowe's,  and  some  of  Defoe's, 
Swift's,  and  Addison's.  /•.'. — Several  as- 
signments of  "copy"  forever,  thai  now 
survive  only  in  the  verdict  of  the  jury. 
■  Millar  v.  Taylor."  A  vast  nui 
drawn  after  the  statute  upon  the  per- 
petual common-law  right  :  one.  referred 
to  in  a  former  letter,  survives  in  print, 
"George  Barnwell."  ed.  1810.  F.— The 
of  the  word  ['by  lawyers"  in  these 
pre-statutory  agreements,  also  in  the 
declaration  "  Ponder  v.  Bradyl,"  an  ac- 
tion on  the  case  brougb.1  for  piratical 
printing  of  -'The  Pilgrim's  Progress," 
"  of  which  " — so  runs  the  plaint — "the 
plaintiff  was,  and  is,  the  true  proprii 
wherehy  he  losl  lit  of 

his  'copy."  "  This  brief  and  technical 
statement  of  the  grievance  is  not  like  a 
pleader  groping  Ids  way  by  periphrasis 
to  a  doubtful  right.  The  pleader  is  mi  a 
beaten   track. 

3.  The  terms  on  which  Milton  leased 
the  copy  qf  "Paradise  Lost"'  to  Sim- 
mons, in  1667.  £5  for  the  first  edition, 
£5  for  the  second  edition,  £5  for  the  third. 
(See  Todd's  "Life  of  Milton.")  This 
contradicts  Yates,  and  his  theoi'y  of  for- 
feiture by  publication,  as  precisely  as  A 
can  contradict  B  in  advance.  When  the 
liar  speaks  first,  true  men  can  fit  the  con- 
tradiction to  the  lie,  in  terms ;  but,  when 
the  honest  men  speak  first,  the  liar  can 
evade    their    direct    grip,    by   choice    of 


terms;  fur  he  has  the  last  word.  Put 
yourself  in  the  place  of  Simmons  ;  if  you 
were  a  publisher,  and  publication  forfeited 
copyright,  would  you  agree  to  give  an 
author  the  very  same  sum  for  the  second 
edition,  and  the  third,  as  for  the  first  :' 
I  am  quite  content  to  refer  Simmons's 
treaty  with  Milton  to  Messrs.  Harper  &i 
Co..  Messrs.  Osgood,  Ticknor  &  Co., 
Messrs.  A.ppleton  &  Co.,  Messrs.  Shel- 
don cv:  Co..  New  York  publishers.  They 
shall  decide  between  Yates  and  me.  Mr. 
Justice  Yates  say-.  Simmons's  was  an 
agreement  with  Milton,  under  the  com- 
mon law.  for  the  mere  sale  of  early  sheets, 
y  Mr.  Justice  Yat(  s  is  a  roman- 
cer. Now  multiply  this  evidence  by  a, 
hundred.  We  only  know  this  business 
(Milton  and  Simmons)  through  the  acci- 
dental celebrity  of  the  book;  hut  the 
jury,  in  1769,  hail  a  pile  of  examples 
before  them. 

4.  The  subsequent  history  of  " Paradise 
Lost."  Paid  by  Simmons  to  John  Milton 
£5  in  1667.  In  1669.  £5  lor  the  se<  ond 
edition.  In  1<>74.  £5  for  the  third  edition, 
paid  to  Milton's  widow.  In  1680,  sale  of 
the  copyright,  for  £8,  Dame  Milton  to 
Simmons.  Simmons,  in  two  years,  sold 
the  copyright  to  Aylmer  lor  £25:  and 
Ayliner,  1683.  sold  half  to  Tonson,  and, 
in  1690,  the  other  half,  for  a  consider- 
able sum.    Soon  after  that  a  vast    public 

i  in  :  yet  Tonson  held  the  copy- 
right undisturbed.  The  temptation  was 
strong:  but  so  was  the  common  law. 
It  was  never  pirated  till  1730.  seventy- 
two  years  after  first  publication.  It  was 
no  sooner  pirated  than  Tonson  moved  the 
court.  It  had  no  protection  under  the 
Act.  That  protection  expired  in  1731. 
A  judge,  who  was  a  ripe  lawyer  before 
Queen  Anne's  statute,  and  knew  the  pre- 
cedent common-law  right,  restrained  the 
piracy  at  once  under  the  common  law, 
"  Tonson  v.  Walker." 

Legal  History  —  1667-1710,  protected 
by  common  law  alone,  and  never  pirated. 
1710-1731,  protected  by  common  law  and 
statute.  1732  to  1774.  by  common  law 
only.  Protected  by  injunction,  1739,  and' 
again  in  1751. 

5.  The   verdict   of  the  special  jury  in 


EE AD  I  AN  A. 


303 


**  Millar  v.  Taylor."  They  were  not  men 
blinded  by  any  preconceived  notion;  they 
were  twelve  men  of  the  world  ;  they 
sifted  the  evidence,  and  found  disjunc- 
tive]}' that  it  was  "  usual,  before  Queen 
Anne,  to  purchase  from  authors  perpetual 
copyrights,  and  to  assign  the  same  from 
hand  to  hand,  and  to  make  them  the 
subject  of  family  settlements  :  "  all  those 
disjunctive  finding's  are  equally  good 
against  the  public  claimant,  unless 
Yates  can  prove  it  was  also  the  custom 
before  Queen  Anne  to  settle  Bag-shot 
Heath,  and  Wimbledon  Common,  and  ten 
turnpike  roads  upon  son  Dick,  with  a 
mortgage  to  nephew  Tom,  and  a  remain- 
der to  cousin  Sal.  His  legal  objection 
that  custom  short  of  immemorial  cannot 
make  a  legal  title  is  specious.  But  he 
forgets ;  the  root  of  our  title  is  not  in 
anything  so  short  as  what  lawyers  call 
immemorial  custom.  Our  title  is  ac- 
quired by  productive  labor,  and  is  per- 
sonal property — a  legal  right  six  times 
as  old  as  the  British  nation. 

The  narrow  question  of  fact  the  jury 
dealt  with  was  this — was  it  usual  for  the 
act  of  publication  to  dissolve  in  one  mo- 
ment the  perpetual  right  Judge  Yates 
admits,  a  right  acquired  not  by  custom, 
if  you  please,  but  by  productive  labor  and 
universal  law  ?  For  its  modest  office  of 
interpreter  of  law  applied  to  so  narrow  a 
matter  as  non-forfeiture  of  an  admitted 
right,  the  custom  of  two  hundred  years 
(solidified  by  a  law  case  or  two),  and  con- 
tradicted by  no  elder  nor  concurrent 
custom,  is  more  than  sufficient — "consue- 
tudo  interpres  legum."  The  special  jury 
were  educated  men ;  impartial  men  ; 
sworn  men  ;  many  men  ;  unanimous  men ; 
Yates  was  one  unsworn  man,  with  a  bee 
in  his  bonnet.  The  twelve  jurors  were 
the  constitutional  tribunal,  chosen  of  old 
by  the  Kingdom,  and  still  chosen  by  the 
great  Republic  to  try  such  issues.  The 
one  Yates  was,  as  respects  this  issue,  an 
unconstitutional  tribunal  appointed  by 
himself,  and  no  more  sworn  to  try  that 
issue  than  Dr.  Kenealy  was  sworn  to  try 
the  issues  in  the  "Queen  v.  Baker." 

The  verdict  of  that  jury  is  law;  and  the 
usage  of   the  kingdom  for    ages    before 


Queen  Anne  is  proved  to  be  non-forfeiture 
by  publication,  and  proved  on  evidence 
since  dispersed  ;  and  therefore  proved  to 

THE  END  OF  TIME. 

G.  The  preamble  of  the  statute.  This 
is  pre-statutoiy  evidence,  and  Yates  says 
it  accords  with  his  views.  The  reader 
shall  judge.  I  will  draw  a  preamble 
honestly  embodying  his  views — as  every 
candid  mind  shall  own — and  I  will  place 
it  cheek  by  jowl  with  Queen  Anne's  pre- 
lude. 


Preamble  a  la  Yates. 

Whereas,  for  the  great- 
er encouragement  of 
writers  and  other  learned 
men,  to  produce  labori- 
ous and  useful  books  of 
lasting  benefit  to  man- 
kind, it  is  expedient  to 
restrict,for  certain  times, 
and  under  certain  condi- 
tions, that  just  liberty, 
which  the  subjects  of 
this  realm  have  hitherto 
enjoyed,  of  reprinting 
and  publishing  all  such 
works  as  by  publication 
have  become  common 
property ;  be  it  enacted, 
etc. 


Preamble  of  the  Act 

8th  Anne. 
Whereas  printers,book- 
sellers,  and  other  per- 
sons, have  of  late  fre- 
quently taken  the  liberty 
of  printing,  reprinting, 
and  publishing,  books, 
and  other  writings,  with- 
out the  consent  of  the 
authors,  or  proprietors  of 
such  books  and  writings, 
to  their  very  great  detri- 
ment and  too  often  to  the 
ruin  of  them  and  their 
families ;  for  preventing 
therefore  such  practices 
for  the  future,  be  it  enact- 
ed, etc. 


I  make  no  comment.  I  but  invite  ripe 
men  to  inspect  this  as  intelligently  as  girls 
do  Sir  Octopus.  Eyes  and  no  eyes  have 
muddled  copyright  long  enough. 

7.  Lawcases.  A.— "Roper  v.  Streater," 
King's  Bench.  Alias  copyright,  or  liter- 
ary property,  v.  monopoly. 

Judgment  of  the  whole  Bench  for  copj'- 
right  at  law  against  monopoly  and  pre- 
rogative. 

B. — "Roper  v.  Streater."  House  of 
Lords. 

The  Lords  admitted  perpetual  copyright 
at  law,  but  declared  the  king  had  a  pay- 
master's claim  to  Judge  Croke's  reports 
because  he  paid  the  judges  and  acquired  a 
copy  right  in  their  decisions.  Thus  they 
smuggled  him  in  as  proprietor  at  common 
law.  Yates's  theory  of  forfeiture  by 
publication  never  occurred  to  the  mind  of 
any  judge,  either  in  the  King's  Bench  or 
the  House  of  Lords. 

C—  The  injunctions  soon  after  the 
statute.  Here  there  are  two  things  to  be 
considered.  1st.  A  judge  does  not  roll 
out  of  his  cradle  on  to  the  woolsack.  Sir 
Joseph  Jekyl  was  a  ripe  lawyer  in  1700, 


304 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


when  "Roper  v.  Streater"  was  tried  in 
the  Lords.  He  saw  the  common-law 
right  long  before  the  statute,  and  went 
by  it  after  the  statute,  and  against  the 
literal  words  of  the  statute ;  for  they 
affix  a  term,  and  so  could  never  suggest 
a  new  perpetual  right.  In  1735  he  re- 
strained ;i  piracy  on  "The  Whole  Duty 
of  Man,"  published  in  165?  ("Eyre  v. 
Walker"). 

2d.  In  those  days  an  injunction  really 
meant  "an  injunction  to  stay  waste  of 
some  property  not  disputable  at  law." 
Where  there  was  a  shadow  of  doubt  at 
Westminster  no  equity  judge  would  ever 
grant  an  injunction.  This  is  notorious:  con- 
sequently the  injunctions  granted  on  the 
perpetual  common-law  right,  byju 
timid,  are  evidence  no1  only  oi  their  own 
adhesion  to  the  perpetual  common-law 
right,  but  proofs  that  all  the  contempo- 
rary judges  at  Westminster  concurred 
tacitly.  Agreeably  to  tins  Lord  Mans- 
field distinctly  declares  that  the  first 
doubt,  which  ever  arose  about  the  per- 
petual right,  was  in  "  Tonson  v.  Collins ;" 
and  the  Court  of  Chancery,  on  hearings 
mere  whisper  of  that  doubt  down  at 
minster,  instantly  refused  the  in- 
junction, because  of  the  doubt,  though 
they  did  nol  share  it.  1  myself  knowfrom 
quite  another  source  that  they  even  sus- 
pended their  proceedings  in  "Macklin  v. 
Richardson  "  because  "Millar  v.  Taylor" 
was  pending  in  the  King's  Bench.  There- 
fore t  he  chain  of  injunctions  1  hey  granted 
between  1735  and  1751,  on  the  perpetual 
common-law  right,  were  post-statutory 
acts  by  pre-statutory  minds  represent- 
ing the  whole  judicial  opinion  of  the 
nation  l<(  forr  ami  after  the  statute. 

s.  Admissions. — This  is  the  highest 
kind  of  evidence.  A. — Milton  attacked  a 
parliamentary  licensing  Act  with  great 
spirit.  When  a  man  falls  upon  a  measure 
in  the  heat  of  controversy  he  is  seldom 
nice.  Yet  this  polemic  and  great  enthu- 
siast for  liberty  drew  the  rein  at  private 
property,  and  solemnly  approved  the  con- 
stitutional clause  in  the  Act,  the  severe 
protection  of  copyright.  B. — The  peti- 
tioners to  Parliament  in  1703.  It  was 
their  interest  to  make  a  strong  case  for 


parliamentary  interference.  Yet  they  ad- 
mitted they  had  an  action  on  the  case 
against  pirates,  and  had  no  fears  of  a  ver- 
dict ;  but  could  not  get  sufficient  damages, 
nor  enforce  them,  because  the  pirates 
were  paupers.  The  force  of  this  unwilling 
evidence  has  never  been  justly  appreci- 
ated. 

C. — A  Legal  Phenomenon.  —  Judge 
Yates  had  a  peek  at  several  minor  cases, 
but  never  once,  in  a  discourse  thai  lasted 
t  hive  hours,  did  he  dare  to  touch  "  Roper 
v.  Streater,"  either  in  the  King's  Bench 
or  the  House  of  Lords.  Now  when  a  law- 
yer dare  not  call  his  own  principal  \\  h  uess, 
we  all  know  fact,  is  dead  against  him  : 
and.  when  he  affects  to  ignore  the  leading 
case  againsl  him,  that  means  be  cannot 
gel  over  the  law  of  that  case,  and  knows 
it.  Of  course  a  more  honest  judge  would 
have  faced  it.  and  either  got  over  it.  or 
else  given  into  it.  Indeed,  there  is  no 
other  recorded  instance  in  which  a  dis- 
sentient puisne  judge  ever  shirked  the 
_  ease  relied  on  by  the  chief  of  his 
court  and  the  other  puisnes  in  any  case 
so  fully  reported  as  "  .Millar  y.  Taylor."  It 
is  phenomenal.  Every  practical  lawyer 
knows  in  Ins  heart  what  it  means,  and  it 
is  a  game  thai  only  pays  with  dull  or  in- 
experienced men.  To  us,  who  know  courts 
of  law.  and  the  tact  of  counsel  m  gliding, 
with  a  face  of  vi t  til  ine  innocence,  over  what 
they  cannot  encounter,  it  is  but  shallow 
art;  for  it  blows  the  gaff;  and  the  critic 
goes  at  once  to  the  ignored  case,  to  see 
whyit  was  ignored.  Well,  Yates  •■_ 
"Roper  V.  Streater"  because  ho  wanted 
people  to  believe  two  infernal   falsehoods 

(1)  that  perpetual  copyright  at  law  in 
printed  books  did  not  exist  before  Queen 
Anne,  and  (?)  that,  had  it  existed,  it 
would  have  been  a  monopoly  opposed  to 
property.  Now,  in  both  these  particulars, 
Roper,  or  property,  gave  him  the  lie — 
Streater,  or  monopoly,  gave  him  the  lie — 
and  all  the  judges,  in  both  courts,  gave 
him  the  lie.  That  is  why  he  evaded 
"Roper  v.  Streater,"  and  the  unprece- 
dented evasion  is  evidence  that  he  knew 
it  smashed  him. 

Thus  "Palmer  v.  De  Witt."  and  the 
other  cases,  backed  by  common  sense  and 


READIANA. 


305 


universal  law,  prove  a  man's  perpetual 
incorporeal  property  in  the  fruit  of  his 
own  skilled  labor.  That  law,  deviating' 
from  all  its  habits,  divested  a  man  of  so 
sacred  a  right  because  he  exercised  it,  is 
a  chimera  supported  only  by  a  priori 
reasoning  and  romantic  phrases  born 
about  1750,  and  unknown  to  the  old 
judges. i  First  Ave  answer  a  fool  accord- 
ing to  his  folly,  and  pull  his  chimera  to 
pieces.  Then  we  answer  him  not  accord- 
ing to  his  folly,  but  on  the  great  Baconian 
method.  And  now  this  is  clear;  either 
Bacon  was  an  idiot,  or  Yates  was  an  idiot. 
We  prefer  Bacon,  and  to  go,  in  a  matter 
of  fact,  by  the  general  usage,  and  the 
sense  of  the  old  kingdom,  sworn  to  on 
evidence  by  a  jury,  and  confirmed  and 
solidified  by  a  chain  of  reported  law  cases, 
beginning  before  the  statute  and  continu- 
ing by  the  force  of  common  law  after  the 
statute,  in  a  perfect  catena ;  also  the 
obiter  dicta  of  the  old  judges,  and  their 
dictaad  rem,  all  which  heterogeneous  evi- 
dence is  "uncontradicted  by  any  usage, 
book,  judgment,  or  sa3'ing."  Teste  Lord 
Mansfield.  So  then  "Robertson  v.  De 
Witt"  and  the  complete  proof  supra  of 
non-forfeiture  by  publication  at  common 
law  give  us  copyright  in  printed  books  in 
the  United  States.  We  claim  it  from  the 
judges  at  Washington,  should  we  be  driven 
to  fight  it  in  that  form,  and  meantime  we 
appeal  to  their  consciences  to  back  us 
with  the  Legislature  of  their  country. 
For,  if  Robertson,  making  twenty  copies 
of  "  Caste,"  and  fifty  sets  of  parts,  which 
is  multiplication  of  copies  in  a  way  of 
trade,  and  handing  the  parts  to  two  hun- 
dred different  actors — a  reading  public — 
and  delivering-  the  words  for  money  to 
about  a  million  spectators  who  pay,  can- 
not by  the  common  law  be  pillaged  of  his 
sole  right  to  print  and  publish,  what  a 
farce  it  is  to  pretend  on  grounds  of  com- 
mon law  that  another  British  writer,  for 
publishing  a  book  and  selling  one  hundred 
copies  in  Great  Britain,  can  be  lawfully 
despoiled  in  the  United  States  of  his  sole 
right,  in  spite  of  Blackstone  and  Mans- 
field, and  on  the  ground  of  a  mere  varia- 
tion in  the  mode  of  publicity  and  the  way 
of  selling.     By  such  reasoning  law  is  di- 


vorced from  common  sense  and  from  all 
ancient  interpretation  and  usage,  and 
from  even  the  shadow  of  morality.  Now 
law  exists,  not  for  the  sake  of  law,  but  of 
morality.  Chakles  Reade. 


NINTH  LETTER. 

Sir — The  power  of  judges  is  often  crip- 
pled by  precedents,  that  revolt  their 
consciences  and  their  sense  ;  but  a  Legis- 
lature is  happier ;  the  justice  it  sees,  that 
it  can  do.  Now,  when  literary  property 
was  first  seriously  discussed  in  the  States, 
the  question  whether  copyright  is  a  prop- 
erty or  a  monopoly,  a  natural  right  or  a 
creature  of  prerogative,  had  just  been 
discussed  in  England,  and  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Massachusetts  read  "Millar  v. 
Taylor"  and  "Donaldson  v.  Becket," 
and  decided  between  the  dwarf  sophist 
Yates,  and  the  great  lawyer  Mansfield, 
in  very  clear  terms.  I  beg  particular 
attention  to  this,  that  Justice  Yates 
pointed  to  the  title  of  Queen  Anne's 
statute,  as  "an  Act  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  learning,  by  vesting  the  copies 
(copyrights)  of  printed  books  in  the  au- 
thors or  purchasers,"  and  said  very  fairly 
that  the  term  "vested  "  implied  that  the 
right  did  not  exist  before,  in  the  opinion 
of  Parliament.  To  this  Lord  Mansfield 
replied  that  the  title  of  an  Act  is  no  part 
of  an  Act  j  and  that  in  the  body  of  the 
Act  the  word  "to  vest"  is  not  used,  but 
the  word  "to  secure,"  and  that  the  pre- 
amble would  decide  the  question,  even  if 
a  title  could  be  cited  against  the  body  of 
an  Act,  for  the  preamble  is  full  and  clear 
in  its  recognition  of  the  then  existing 
property. 

In  March.  1783,  the  Legislature  of  Mas- 
sachusetts gave  judgment  on  this  ques- 
tion of  title  v.  body  and  preamble,  as 
precisely  as  if  Mansfield  and  Yates  had 
referred  it  to  them.  They  passed  their 
first  Copyright  Act  under  this  title — - 
"  An  Act  for  the  purpose  of  securing  to 
authors  the   exclusive  right  and   benefit 


306 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


of  publishing  their  literary  productions 
for  twenty-one  years.'-  Having  elected 
between  ••vest''  and  -'secure"  in  their 
title,  they  passed  to  the  second  point; 
and,  to  leave  no  shadow  of  a  doubt  as  to 
their  views,  drew  such  a  preamble,  as 
even  Mr.  Justice  Yates,  who  affects  to 
misunderstand  Queen  Anne's  preamble, 
could  hardly  twist  from  its  meaning  : 
and  I  shall  be  grateful  to  any  American 
critic,  who  will  do  American  and  E 
authors  so  much  justice  as  to  inspect  the 
comparative  preambles  I  put  together 
in  my  last  and  compare  hoth  with  this 
which  I  now  cite  : 

••  Whereas  the  improvement  of  knowl- 
edge,  the    progress    of    civilization,   the 
public    weal    of    the   community,   and   the 
advancement  of  human  happi 
depend  on  the  efforts  of  learned  and  in- 
genious persons  in  the  various  arts  and 
5:     As  the    principal    encourage- 
menl    such   persons  can    nave    to   make 
great    and    beneficial    exertions  of    this 
nature  must  depend  on  the  1 
of  t le-  fruits  of  1  heir  study  and  ii 
to  themselves;    and.  as  such   security  is 
one  of  the  natural  rights  of  all  men.  there 
being    no    property    more    peculiarly    a 
man's  own  than  that  which  is  produced 
by  the  labor   of  his  mind,   therefore  to 
encourage  learned  and  ingenious  | 
to  write  useful  books  for  the  benefit  of 
mankind.   Be  it    enacted."  etc.      1    Mass. 
Laws.  94,  e,l.  L801. 

The  other  States  followed  this  example 
and  these  sentiments  ;  all  avoid  the  word 
"  vest  "  ami  employ  the  word  ••secure." 
and  all.  or  most  of  them,  recognize  the 
security  of  an  author's  properly  a-  '-a 
right  perfectly  agreeable  to  the  princi- 
ples of  natural  justice  and  equity."  See 
the  excellent  work  on  copyright  of  G. 
T.  Curtis,  an  American  jurist,  p.  ". 

The  very  idea  of  "monopoly  *'  is  absent 
from  all  these  Acts:  they  emanated 
from  men  who  were  lovers  of  liberty  and 
constitutional  rights,  and  had  shown  how 
well  they  could  fight  for  them  .  whereas 
canting  Camden  illustrated  his  peculiar 
views  of  the  common  law  by  not  uttering 
one  word  of  objection  in  the  House  of 
Lords  to  a   parliamentary  tax  upon  the 


colonies  for  the  benefit  of  England  :  an 
usurpation  it  would  be  as  difficult  to  And 
in  the  law  of  England  as  it  is  easy  to  find 
copyright  here. 

From  these  sound  principles  of  justice 
and  national  policy  the  Legislature  of  the 
United  States  has  fallen  away,  and  list- 
ened this  many  years  to  cant,  and  the 
short-sighted  greed  of  a  Venetian  oli- 
garchy sticking  like  a  fungus  on  the  fair 
trunk  of  the  Republican  tree.  But  I  dare 
say  not  one  member  of  Congress  knows 
how  unjust  and  unwise  is  the  present 
state  of  statute  law,  as  regards  British 
ami  American  authors.  It  is  not  only 
injustice  we  writhe  under,  but  bitter,  and 
biting,  and  inconsistent  partiality. 

Even  little  lawyers,  though  their  men- 
tal vision  is  too  weak  to  see  tie'  essential 
difference  between  patent-right  and  copy- 
right, have  a  sort  of  confused  notion  that 
copyrighl  is  a  trifle  more  sacred,  and 
ut  with  common  law.  than  the 
various  and  distinct  monopolies,  just  and 
unjust,  which  the  narrow  vocabulary  of 
law  huddles  together  under  the  term 
patent-right.  Yet.  m  this  great  and 
enlightened  Republic,  international  copy- 
right and  stage  right,  by  statute,  are  re- 
fused,  and  international  patent-righl  es- 
i   ed. 

-i  Lncl  ion  is  a  masti  rpiece  of  par- 
tiality, immorality,  and  inconsistency. 
The  patenl  on  new  subs.tances  discovered 
or  imported  is  a  monstrous,  unconstitu- 
tional restraint  of  just  liberty,  and  will 
be  abolished  whenever  Legislature  rises 
to  a  science.  The  patent  of  invention  s 
salutary.  It  is  the  exclusive  right  to 
carry  out  and  embody,  by  skilled  labor, 
one  or  two  bare  and  fleshless  ideas,  but 
sometimes  of  prodigious  value  to  the 
world:  oftener,  of  course,  not  worth  a 
button. 

The  patent  of  invention  is  a  mild  mo- 
nopoly in  a  species  or  sub-species  of 
ideas  :  but  copyright  in  bare  ideas  does 
not  exist.  Copyright  cannot  arise  until 
the  bare  and  fleshless  ideas  of  the  author, 
infinitely  more  numerous  than  a  paten- 
tee's, have  been  united  with  matter,  and 
wrought  out  by  the  mental  and  physical 
labor  of  the  writer,  which  physical  labor 


EEADIAXA. 


307 


accelerates  the  death  of  his  body.  An 
author's  physical  posture,  when  at  work, 
is  the  same  as  a  printing-  compositor's 
physical  posture — see  the  famous  portrait 
of  Dickens  at  work — and  his  physical 
labor  is  similar,  and  equally  bad  for  the 
body,  whereas  thinking'  and  sweating'  at 
the  same  time  are  healthy.  The  author 
does  the  intellectual  and  physical  labor 
not  onl}'  of  the  architect  or  the  mechan- 
ical inventor,  but  also  of  the  builder  or 
of  the  skilled  constructor,  and  his  writ- 
ten manuscript  corresponds  not  with  the 
specification  of  a  patent,  or  the  plan  of 
a  house,  but  with  the  wrought  article, 
and  the  built  house.  The  printing  press 
adds  nothing  to  the  author's  production  ; 
it  does  not  even  alter  the  vehicles,  but 
only  improves  them,  and  that  only  of  late 
years,  since  running  hand.  The  modern 
manuscript  is  paper  with  a  certain  labori- 
ous sequence  of  words  marked  on  it  in 
ink  by  skilled  labor;  the  book  is  paper 
with  the  same  laborious  sequence  of 
words  marked  on  it  by  mere  mechani- 
cal labor  taking  little  time.  Let  A  read 
from  the  manuscript  and  B  from  the 
book,  and  both  readers  deliver  the  same 
complete  production,  corresponding  with 
the  patented  or  patentable  article,  not 
with  the  bare  specification. 

This  object  of  property,  the  author's 
material  web  of  words,  has  not,  in  itself, 
the  value  of  a  patentable  article.  Its 
value  lies  in  its  unique  power  of  self-re- 
production by  means  of  the  actor  or  the 
press.  Mechanical  articles  of  very  mod- 
erate value  are  more  valuable  per  se  than 
any  author's  MS.,  but  mechanical  articles 
have  no  power  of  self-reproduction.  There 
is  no  magic  machine  with  which  three 
quiet  idiots,  without  an  atom  of  construc- 
tive skill,  can  reproduce  steam-engines, 
power  presses,  and  sewing  machines.  But 
three  quiet  idiots,  with  the  printing-  press, 
can,  without  one  grain  of  the  original 
author's  peculiar  art,  skill,  and  labor,  re- 
produce exactly  his  whole  composition, 
and  can  rob  him  of  the  entire  value  in  his 
object  of  property,  because,  without  the 
sole  right  of  printing,  his  object  of  prop- 
erty has  not  the  value  of  a  deal  shaving, 
whereas  an  article  that  might  be  patented. 


but  is  not,  is  worth  riinety-two  per  cent 
of  the  same  article  patented . 

Thus  the  American  Legislature  outlaws 
t  lie  complete,  executed,  wrought  out 
property  of  a  Briton,  and  protects  his 
inchoate  monopoly  or  exclusive  right  to 
go  and  work  upon  certain  bare  intellect- 
ual ideas,  provided  they  are  bare  ideas 
applicable  to  mechanics. 

Take  this  specification  to  a  Patent 
Office.  "  I  have  invented  a  young  man 
and  two  sisters  in  love  with  him.  They 
were  amiable  till  he  came,  but  now  they 
undermine  each  other  to  get  the  young 
man  ;  and  they  reveal  such  faults  that  he 
marries  an  artful  jade  who  praised  every- 
body." 

You  apply  for  a  patent  or  monopoly  of 
these  bare  ideas,  this  little  sub-species  of 
story.  You  are  refused,  not  because  there 
is  no  invention  in  the  thing — there  is 
mighty  little,  but  there  is  as  much  as  in 
nine  patents  out  of  ten :  where  is  the 
author  who  could  not  sit  on  a  sofa  and 
speak  Patents  ? — but  because  the  common 
law,  whose  creature  copyright  is,  protects 
in  an  author,  not  invention,  but  construc- 
tive labor  ;  gives  him  no  property  in  bare 
ideas,  but  only  in  a  labored  sequence  of 
written  words  which  convey  ideas,  but 
are  produced  by  physical  and  intellectual 
labor  mixed,  and  are  distinctly  material 
in  nature  and  character,  though  they 
carry  an  intellectual  force  and  value. 

The  piratical  imitation  of  a  patented 
sewing  machine  is  only  imitation  by 
skilled  workmen  of  the  patentee's  ideas  ; 
it  is  not  identical  reproduction  of  his 
wrought-out  and  embodied  ideas,  by  mere 
mechanics  working  a  stealing  machine. 
To  pirate  a  patented  article  you  must  em- 
ploy the  same  kind  of  constructive  skill 
the  patentee,  or  his  paid  constructors 
employ,  and  then  you  only  mimic ;  but  to 
pirate  an  author  and  steal  his  identical 
work,  none  of  an  author's  skill  or  labor  is 
required.  All  the  brains  required  to  re- 
produce mechanically  that  sequence  of 
words,  which  is  an  author's  object  of 
property,  are  furnished  to  this  day  by 
John  of  Gutenberg,  who  invented  the 
machine,  by  which  an  author  lives  or  dies, 
as  law  protects  him,  or  lets  thieves  rob 


308 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READS. 


him  with  a  stealing  instrument  worked  03- 
mere  mechanics. 

So  then  the  American  Legislature  pro- 
tects a  foreigner's  monopoly,  and  steals 
a  foreigner's  property.  The  monopoly 
this  great  Republic  protects  is  the  creat- 
ure of  the  British  Crown,  to  which  the 
great  Republic  owes  nothing,  and  the 
properly  i(  outlaws  is  a  property  that 
arose  in  the  breast  and  brain  ami  con- 
science of  our  common  ancestors.  They, 
whose  wisdom  and  justice  founded  this 
property  m  England,  were  just  as 
much  Americans  as  English,  and  we 
all  sprang  from  those  brave,  just,  and 
honest    men. 

To  swindle  poor.  weak,  deserving,  pri- 
vate men  of  a  kindred  nation  out  of  tins 
sacred  property,  which  our  common  an- 
cestors created  and  venerated  and  de- 
fended againsl  1  he  ( Iroto  a  in  "  Roper  v. 
Streater,"  as  the  United  States  defended 
their  rights  againsl  a  Parliament  usurp- 
ing Russian  prerogatives,  a  pi 
which  Milton  revered,  whose  heart  was 
with  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  all  just 
liberty  whatever;  and  to  protect  a  Bri- 
fcon's  monopoly,  the  mere  creature  of 
arbitrary  prerogative  —  this  double  in- 
iquity. 1  say.  is  legislation  that  li- 
the name  of  legislation  and  national  sen- 
timent ;  it  is  a  prodigy  of  injustice,  par- 
tiality, and  inconsistency.  What  !  I 
spend  two  thousand  hours"  labor  on  a 
composition  ;  to  be  sold  it  must  be 
wedded  to  vehicles,  paper,  type,  bind- 
ing, and  it  must  be  advert  ised.  I  pa\ 
the  paper-makers,  the  printers,  the  bind- 
ers. I  pay  the  advertisements:  the  re- 
tail trader  takes  twenty-five  per  cenl  of 
my  gross  receipts:  the  publisher  justly 
shares  my  profits.  The  book  succeeds. 
I  cross  the  water  with  it.  and  its  reputa- 
tion earned  by  my  labor,  and  my  adver- 
tisements;  I  ask  a  trifling  share  of  the 
profits  from  an  American  publisher,  who 
profits  by  me  as  much  as  ever  my  British 
publisher  did.  "  You  !  "  says  he,  "you 
ai'e  nobody  in  this  business.  I  shall  pay 
for  the  vehicles,  but  not  for  the  pro- 
duction that  sells  the  vehicles.  I  shall 
pay  the  paper-makers,  and  also  the  print- 
ers and  binders.  Britons  or  not.     But  I 


shall  take  your  labor  gratis,  on  the  pre- 
tense that  you  are  a  Briton.""  The  Ameri- 
can public  pays  a  dollar  for  the  book  ; 
fifty-five  cents  of  the  value  is  contributed 
by  the  English  author.  The  various  lab- 
orers, who  are  all  paid,  make  up  the 
forty-five  cents  among  them.  He  who 
alone  contributes  fifty-five  per  cent  is 
the  one  picked  ou1  of  half-a-dozen  work- 
men eoncerned  to  be  swindled  out  of  every 
cent,  and  the  Legislature  never  even  sus- 
iat  by  so  doing  it  disgraces  legis- 
lature and  mankind.  An  Englishman 
wiiii-s  a  play,  mixing  labor  with  inven- 
tion. The  stage  carpenter  contributes  a 
petty  mechanical   idea  suggested  by  the 

scene:    he   u-es  wavy   glass    at     an    angle 
under    limelight    to    represent    the    water. 

The  play  crosses  the  Atlantic;  anybody 

steals    it     for    all    the     Legislature    cares. 

but.  if  they  toucb  my  carpenter's  demi- 
semi-invention,  his  bare  fteshless  inti 
ual  idea  of  placing  an  old  substance,  glass, 
at  an  angle  under  another  old  thing,  lime- 
lighl  — "  Ealte  la  ne  touchez  pas  a  la 
Reine  !  "  The  creature  of  Crown  Pre- 
rogative  protects  in  New  Fork  and  Bos- 
ton the  naked  half  idea  of  the  British 
carpenter.  No  American  glass  and  lime- 
lighl  honestly  bought  must  be  wedded  to 
that  bare  idea  :  and  the  idea  taken  gratis. 
Only  the  property  can  be  stolen — because 
il    belongs   to  the  everlasting  victim  of 

man's  beast  l\  cruelly  and  injustice:  the 
dirty  little  British  monopoly  is  secure. 
The  British  actormust  be  paid  four  times 
his  British  price  for  delivering  the  Brit- 
ish author's  property  in  a  New  York  or 
Boston  theater;  the  fiddlers,  Britons  or 
not.  for  fiddling  to  n  ;  the  door-keepers 
for  letting  in  the  public  to  see  it,  etc. 
Only  the  one  imperial  workman,  who 
created  the  production,  and  inspired  the 
carpenter  with  his  lucrative  demi-semi- 
idea.  and  set  the  actors  acting,  and  the 
fiddlers  fiddling,  and  the  public  paying-. 
and  the  thief  of  a  manager  jingling  an- 
other man's  money,  is  singled  out  of 
about  eighty  people,  all  paid  out  of  his 
one  skull,  to  be  swindled  of  every  cent, 
on  the  pretense  that  he  is  a  Briton  ;  but 
really  because  he  is  an  author. 
The  world— wicked  and  barbarous  as  it 


READIANA. 


309 


is — affords  no  parallel  to  this.  It  is  not 
the  injustice  of  earth  ;  it  is  the  injustice 
of  hell.  Charles  Reade. 


TENTH  LETTER. 
Sir — I  ask  leave  to  head  this  letter 
The  Fivefold  Iniquity. 

The  outlawry  of  British  authors  and 
their  property  is  a  small  portion  of  the 
injustice.  The  British  Legislature  has 
for  years  offered  the  right  hand  of  in- 
ternational justice ;  it  is  therefore  the 
American  Legislature  that  robs  the  Amer- 
ican author  in  England.  That  is  No.  2. 
But  the  worst  is  behind.  The  United 
States  are  a  stiff  protectionist  nation. 
The  American  chair -maker,  carriage- 
maker,  horse-breeder,  and  all  producers 
whatever  are  secured  by  heavy  imposts 
against  fair  competition  with  foreigners. 
Also  the  American  publisher,  and  the 
American  stationer.  The  tariff  taxes  pa- 
per, I  think,  and  is  severe  on  English 
books.  But  turn  to  the  American  au- 
thor.— He  cannot  write  a  good  work  by 
machinery  ;  like  the  English  author,  he 
can  only  produce  it  by  labor,  intellectual 
and  physical,  of  a  nature  proved  to 
shorten  life  more  or  less.  While  he  is 
writing  it,  debt  must  accumulate.  When 
written,  how  is  this  laborious  producer 
in  a  protectionist  nation  protected  ?  Are 
imported  compositions  paid  for  like  any 
other  import,  and  also  taxed  at  the  ports 
to  protect  the  native  producer?  On  the 
contrary,  the  foreign  literary  composi- 
tion is  the  one  thing  not  taxed  at  the 
ports,  and  also  the  one  thing  stolen. 
And  the  State,  which  dances  this  double 
shuffle  on  the  author's  despised  body  at 
home,  robs  him  of  his  property  abroad. 

The  enormity  escapes  the  judgment  of 
the  American  public  in  a  curious  way, 
which  T  recommend  to  the  notice  of  meta- 
physicians. It  seems  that  men  can  judge 
things  only  by  measurement  with  similar 


things.  But  the  world  offers  no  parallel 
to  this  compound  iniquity,  and  so,  com- 
parison being  impossible,  the  unique  vil- 
lainy passes  for  no  villainy. 

I  will  try  and  remove  that  illusion. 
Let  us  suppose  a  fast-trotting  breed  of 
horses,  valueless  in  trade  without  a  car 
and  harness.  You  must  yoke  the  horse 
to  car  and  harness,  and  then  they  run 
together,  and  are  valuable ;  but  they 
don't  melt  together,  because  they  are 
heterogeneous  properties  ;  and  so  are  the 
author's  composition  and  its  vehicles  het- 
erogeneous properties  ;  you  may  mix  the 
two,  but  you  cannot  confound  them  as 
you  can  flour  and  mustard,  by  mixing-. 

An  American  citizen  breeds  a  horse, 
at  considerable  expense,  for  the  dealers. 
They  supply  the  cart  and  harness,  and 
have  virtually  a,  monopoly  in  the  trade. 

Carts  and  harness,  to  be  imported, 
must  be  bought  and  taxed. 

But  the  Legislature  permits  the  dealer, 
and  trade  monopolist,  to  steal  foreign 
horses,  and  also  import  them  untaxed. 

How  can  the  American  breeder  com- 
pete with  this  double  iniquity  ? 

The  analogy  is  strict.  This  is  the  so- 
cial, political,  and  moral  position  of  the 
American  author,  in  a  protectionist  na- 
tion, and  he  owes  it  to  his  own  Legisla- 
ture. Our  Legislature  offers  to  treat 
him  as  a  man,  not  a  beast.  Now  does 
this  poor  devil  pay  the  national  taxes  ? 
He  does.  What  for  ?  The  State  has  no 
claim  on  him.  The  State  has  outlawed 
him ;  has  disowned  his  citizenship,  and 
even  his  humanity.  Is  he  expected  not 
to  take  any  property  he  can  lay  his  hand 
on  ?  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  Laiv  is  only  a 
mutual  compact  betiveen  man  and  man. 
In  the  American  author's  case,  the  Repub- 
lic, through  its  representatives,  has  dis- 
solved that  mutual  compact,  and  broken 
the  public  faith  with  the  individual  sub- 
ject. The  man  is  now  reduced  to  a  state 
of  nature,  and  may  take  anything  he  can 
lay  his  hands  on.  There  is  not  a  casuist, 
alive  or  dead,  who  will  deny  this.  Earth 
offers  no  parallel  to  this  quintuple  in- 
iquity. 1.  British  monopoly  respected. 
2.  British  propertj'  stolen.  3.  American 
author  struck  out  of  the  national  system, 


310 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


Protection.  4.  Crushed  under  the  compe- 
tition of  foreign  stolen  goods.  5.  Robbed 
of  his  natural  property,  and  his  rights  of 
man,  in  England. 

A  property  founded,  as  the  sages  of 
Massachusetts  justly  say,  on  the  natural 
rights  of  man  to  the  fruits  of  his  labor, 
cannot  be  property  in  one  country  and  no 
property  in  another.  It  can  beprotected 
in  one  country  and  stolen  in  another  :  but 
it  is  just  as  much  property  in  the  country 
where  it  is  stolen,  as  in  the  country  w  here 
it  is  protected.  Geographical  probity — 
local  morality — Thou  shalt  not  .steal  — 
pi  from  a  British  author  out  of 
bounds — Do  unto  your  neighbor  as  you 
would  he  should  do  to  you — unless  he 
is  a  British  am  hoi-  out  of  bounds — 
all  these  are  vain  endeavors  to 
geographical  amendments  upon  God's 
laws,  and  on  the  old  common  law,  and 
on  the  greal    ungeographica)   consi 

ol    civilized    mankind.     The    l si    man 

spurns    these    provincial     frauds,    plain 
cs    <>f    t  lie    savage ;    and    1  he    pirate 
takes  them,  with    a    sneer,  as  stepping- 
stones  to  i  he  t  hing  withheld. 

In  proof  of  this  1  give  a   few  u 
consequences  of  the  fivefold  iniquity. 

I.  Mutilation  and   forgery. — The   same 
people  that  steal  a  foreign  author's  prop- 
erty mutilate  it.  and  forge  his  nai 
what    he    never    w  rote :    and    t  hey    can- 
nol   be  hindered,  except   by  international 
copyright.    A. — Tom  Taylor  and  Charles 
Reade  write  a  comedjr  called  "  The  K 
Rival."  Here  Nell  <  rwynne,  a  frail  w  oman 
with  a  good  heart,  plays  a  respectable 
part,  because  her  faults  are  no1   paraded, 
and   her  good   qualities  appear  in  action. 
The  comedy  concludes  in  the  king's  closet ; 
be  forgives  his  cousin,  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, and   Frances   Stuart:    the    ci 
doors  are   thrown    open,   the   queen    and 
court  appear,  and  the  king  introduces 
duke   and    duchess   as   a    newly    married 
couple,  and  the  curtain  falls,  because  the 
suspense  has  ceased  :  and  that  is  a  g 
rule.     The  character  of  Nell  Gwynne  was 
admirably  played,  and   we  arranged  for 
the  actress  (Mrs.  Seymour)  to  show-  one 
hand,  and  a  frolic  face  at  a  side-curtain, 
unseen,    of    course,    by    the    queen    and 


the  court,  who  occupy  the  whole  back- 
ground. 

Our  Transatlantic  thief  was  not  satis- 
fied with  this,  nor  with  stealing  our 
brains.  He  brings  Nell  Gwynne  out  of 
her  sly  corner  into  the  very  center  of  the 
stage,  and  gives  her  a  dialogue  with  the 
king,  during  which  the  queen  is  mute. 
perhaps  with  astonishment.  The  twaddle 
of  the  speakers  ends  with  the  king  inviting 
the  company  to  adjourn  to  the  playhouse, 
and  receive  another  lesson  from  Mistress 
Gwynne.  That  lady,  who  in  the  play  had 
shown  a  great  deal  Less  vanity  than  char- 
it  tresses  in  general,  now  replies 
pedantically  for  the  first  time  : 

"It    is    our    .i.'sii-e.    your    majesty,    while    we 
amuse,  to  improve  the  mind.    Our  aim  is — 

By  nature's  study  to  portray  most  clear 
From  B.  a ii n (  r,  Jonson,  immortal 

How  kings  mid  princes  by  our  mimic  art 

ad  applaud  the  actor's  pari . 
Won  in  t  hat  prolifii 
i  thoughts  upon  the  enduring-  page." 

Is  h  possib 

"  Precepts  in  that  powerful  work  we  find 
To  improve  the  morals  and  instruct  the  mind. 
There    he   holds,    as  'twere,    a    mirror    up   to 

Nature. 
Shows  Scorn   her  own  image.  Virtue   her  own 

feature. 
To-night,    king,    queen,    lords,    and    ladies   act 

their  part, 
Each  prompted  by  the  workings  of  the 
And  Ndly  hopes  they  will  not  lose  their  Cau8( — 
Nor  will  they — if  favored — by  your  applause." 

This  is  how  dunces  and  thieves  improve 
writers.  Though  she  is  the  king's  mis- 
i  ress,  this  unblushing  hussy  stands  in  the 
verj  center  of  the  stage,  with  the  king 
between  her  and  his  wife,  the  queen  of 
England  ;  and  though  she  is  an  actress 
who  had  delivered  the  lines  of  Shake- 
speare. Fletcher,  and  other  melodious 
poets,  she  utters  verses  that  halt  and 
waddle,  but  do  not  scan.  The  five-foot 
line  is  attempted,  but  there  are  four-foot 
lines  and  six-foot  lines,  and  lines  unscan- 
nable.  Now  there  is  no  surer  sign  of  an 
uneducated  man  than  not  knowing  how  to 


READIANA. 


311 


scan  verses.  We  detect  the  uneducated 
actor  in  a  moment  by  this.  Our  self- 
imposed  collaborateur  forges  the  name 
of  a  Cambridge  scholar  and  an  Oxford 
scholar  to  a  gross  and  stupid  indelicacy, 
showing  the  absence  both  of  sense  and 
right  feeling,  and  also  to  verses  that  do 
not  scan.  He  lowers  us,  as  writers  and 
men,  in  the  United  States,  which  is  a  very 
educated  country  with  universities  in  it; 
and.  as  these  piratical  books  are  always 
sent  into  England,  in  spite  of  our  teeth, 
he  enables  the  home  pirate  to  swindle  us 
out  of  our  property,  and  also  out  of  our 
credit  as  artists,  scholars,  and  gentlemen, 
at  home.  The  humbugs  who,  following 
Yates  and  Camden,  say  an  author  should 
write  only  for  fame,  will  do  well  to  ob- 
serve that,  wherever  our  property'  is  out- 
lawed, our  reputation  and  credit  as  artists 
are  sure  to  be  niched  away  as  well.  The 
Publishers'  Circular,  a  publication  singu- 
larly gentle  and  moderate,  has  had  to  re- 
monstrate more  than  once  on  the  double 
villainy  of  taking  an  historical  or  scien- 
tific treatise,  using  the  British  author's 
learning,  so  far  as  it  suited,  and  then 
falsifying  his  conclusions  with  a  little  new 
matter,  and  still  forging  his  name  to  the 
whole  for  trade  purposes.  If  this  is  not 
villain}-,  set  open  the  gates  of  Newgate 
and  Sing-Sing,  for  no  greater  rogues  than 
these  are  in  any  convict  prison. 

B. — Fitzball,  an  English  playwright, 
dramatized  a  novel  of  Cooper's.  Fitzball 
coolly  reversed  the  sentiments,  and  so, 
without  a  grain  of  invention,  turned  the 
American  inventor's  genius  inside  out, 
and  made  him  write  the  Briton  up  and 
the  colonist  down.  Such  villainy,  in  time 
of  war,  would  make  a  soldier  blush. 
What  is  it  in  time  of  peace?  The  British 
Legislature  is  willing  to  put  this  out  of 
any  FitzbalPs  power. 

2.  Recoil  of  Piracy. — I  have  the  pro- 
vincial right  in  a  corned y,  "Masks  and 
Faces.''  Many  years  ago  I  let  the  book 
run  out  of  print,  because  I  found  it  facili- 
tated piratical  representation.  Instantly 
piratical  copies,  published  in  New  York, 
were  imported  ;  and,  on  the  most  moder- 
ate calculation,  the  American  Legislature 
has  enabled  British  managers,  actors,  and 


actresses  to  swindle  me,  in  my  own  coun- 
try, out  of  eight  hundred  pounds  in  the 
last  fourteen  years  on  this  single  property. 
I  have  stopped  the  piratical  version  by 
injunction.  But  I  can  only  stop  its  sale 
in  shops.  It  penetrates  into  theaters  like 
a  weasel  or  a  skunk ;  and  no  protection 
short  of  international  copyright  and 
stage-right  is  any  protection.  America 
saps  British  morality  by  example;  Brit- 
ish actresses  are  taught,  by  Congress,  to 
pillage  me  in  the  States.  They  come 
over  here  and  continue  the  habit  the 
American  Legislature  has  taught  them. 
At  this  very  moment  I  have  to  sue  a 
.Glasgow  manager,  because  an  English 
actress  brought  over  a  piratical  American 
book  of  "Masks  and  Faces,"  in  spite 
of  the  injunction,  and  they  played  it  in 
Glasgow  ;  and  I  can  see  the  lady  thinks 
it  hard,  since  she  had  a  right  to  pil- 
lage her  countryman  in  the  States,  that 
she  should  not  be  allowed  to  pillage  him 
also  in  his  own  country.  That  is  how  all 
local  amendments  on  the  eighth  com- 
mandment operate.  They  make  the 
whole  eighth  commandment  seem  un- 
reasonable and  inconsistent. 

3.  A  Dublin  editor  pirated  my  story, 
".It  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend,"  under 
the  title  of  "  Susan  Merton :  a  Tale  of 
the  Heart."  This  alarmed  me  greatly  ; 
it  threatened  a  new  vein  of  fraud  on 
copyrights.  I  moved  the  Irish  Court  of 
Chancery  at  once.  The  offender  pleaded 
ignorance,  and  produced,  to  my  great 
surprise,  an  American  paper,  in  which 
the  story  was  actually  published  under 
the  title  "  Susan  Merton  :  a  Tale  of  the 
Heart  " — and  the  English  author's  name 
suppressed.  So  careful  of  an  author's 
fame,  my  Lord  Camden,  are  those  supe- 
rior spirits  who  set  him  an  example  of 
nobility  by  despising  his  property.  "  It 
is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend  "  is  an  ideaed 
title.  "Susan  Merton"  is  an  unideaed 
title.  I  never  saw  an  American  idiot  yet, 
so  I  apprehend  this  ingenious  customer 
altered  the  title  for  the  worse,  and  sup- 
pressed my  name,  in  order  to  defraud  his 
own  countrymen,  bjT  passing  .-the  thing 
off  as  a  novelty  in  some  sequestered  nook 
of  the  Union.     Well,  this  lie,  on  the  top 


312 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


of  the  piracy,  jeopardized  my  property  in 
England,  and  cost  me  a  sum  of  money  ; 
for  the  defendant  could  not  pay  the  costs. 
The  piratical  proprietor  of  two  Irish 
newspapers  paid  £1  per  week  for  a  little 
while,  and  then  disappeared.  He  wenl 
to  the  States  no  doubt.  I  hope  he  did ; 
for  there  he'll  meet  his  match. 

4.  "Foul  Play,"  a  drama,  was  pro- 
duced in  New  York.  1  was  on  shares 
with  Mr.  Boucicault.  In  course  of  the 
representation  there  was  a  dispute,  the 
grounds  of  which,  as  reported,  1  could 
not  understand.  However,  the  sheriff 
came  on  the  stage  with  his  men.  There 
was  resistance.  Shots  were  Bred,  ami 
two  humble  persons  employed  in  the 
theater,  an  old  man  and  a  boy,  were 
wounded.  I  fell  very  sorry  for  these 
poor  fellows,  who  had  uo  interest  in  the 
quarrel.  Also  I  fell  hair  guilty,  since  it 
happened  in  connect  ion  wil  b  t  hat  parti<  u- 
lar  play.     1  sent  out  CIO  for  them,  to  m.\ 

friends  .Messrs.  Harper:   they  were  g i 

enough  to  take  charge  of  the  matter  ami 
saw  the  sufferers  got  it.  Now  I  don't 
set  up  for  a  sweel .  benevolent  soul  :  1  in- 
tended this  as  a  fair  percentage  to  Amer- 
ican sufferers,  I  o  lie  paid  out  of  A  a 
profits.     Bui  t  he  Yankee  in  charge  of  t  he 

receipts  deranged  my  arithmetic.  He 
Levanted  with  the  receipt-,  ami  my  whole 
commercial  transaction  is  represented  in 
my  books  by  a  paymenl  of  that  small. 
but  solid  percentage  upon — air. 

The  American  saw  the  Britisher  recog- 
nize our  common  humanity  and  not  draw 
geographical  distinctions;  but  he  de- 
spised my  example:  for  why,  he  had  Hie 
example    of   his  1/  .  which   says. 

"When  you  catch  a  British  author  here, 
show  your  hospitality.  Swindle  him  up 
hill  and  down  dale — and  then  goto  church 
and  •  pray  '  to  our  common  Father." 

An  actress  calls  on  me  from  Illinois. 
tall,  dark,  graceful,  handsome,  and  talks 
well,  as  all  American  ladies  do.  She 
wants  a  new  part.  Says  she  has  been  to 
another  author,  and  he  demanded  the 
price  down,  because  she  was  an  Ameri- 
can. Of  course  I  put  on  a  face  of  won- 
der at  that  other  author;  so  inseparable 
is  politeness  from  insincerity.     I  let   her 


have  •Philippa"  and  "The  Wandering 
Heir  "  in  the  States  for  ten  dollars  per 
night,  which  is  a  mere  nominal  price. 
Subsequently  two  English  actresses  of 
the  very  highest  merit  and  popularity 
asked  leave  to  play  the  piece  in  the  Tinted 
Slates.  But  the  Britisher  stood  loyal  to' 
his  Illinois  girl.  Well,  she  sent  me  a 
very  small  sum  from  California.  She 
then  wenl  to  Australia,  played  the  piece 
repeatedly:    wrote    to    me    eight    months 

lling  me  she  only  withheld  pay- 
ments because  she  was  coming  to  En- 
gland :  and  novel-  came  to  England,  nor 
made  me  any  remittance.  The  pari  is 
invaluable  to  an  actress.  It  has  been 
played  by  three  actresses,  in  England, 
and  in  each  case  has  proved  valuable  to 
the  pei-foriner.  In  the  United  States  I 
am  done  out  of  it  as  property,  and  done 
mil  of  all  returns,  because  1  trusted  an 
American  woman  m  a  matter  of  literary 
property. 

5.  My  lii'st  Letter  announced  that  I  con- 
sidered the  American  author  the  head 
victim,  and  I  even  suggested  how  difficult 
Ue  f,u-  a  no\  ice,  even  if  a  man  of 
genius,  to  get  before  tin-  public a1  all.  1 
have  now  advices  from  young  American 
authors  sending  me  details.  They  say 
that  ii  is  very  hard  to  gel  MSS.  read: 
1  hat .  when  they  bring-  a  pictureof  Ameri- 
can hfe.it  i-  slighted,  and  thej  are  ad- 
vised lo  imitate  some  British  writer  or 
other  :  and  that .  in  fact .  servile  imitation 
of  British  styles  is  a  young  writer's  best 
chance.  Bui  they  tell  me  something  I 
did  not    divine — that  I  h  rs  keep 

copying  machines,  and  Hie  rejected  nianu- 
scripl  often  bears  the  marks  of  Hie  ma- 
chine: and  the  subject-matter  is.  in  due 

piratically  used. 
Look  this  cruel  thing-  all  round.     It  be- 
comes the  old    to   feel    for  the  young;   let 
me  trace  that  poor  young  author's  heart. 

-ung,  and  the  young  are  sanguine  : 
he  is  young,  and  the  young  are  slow  to 
suspect  cold-blooded  villainy  and  greed 
in  men  that  are  rich,  and  need  not  cheat 
to  live,  and  live  in  luxury.  He  takes  his 
MS.  in  good  faith  to  a  respectable  man. 
He  is  told  that  it  shall  be  read!  There 
are  delays.      The  poor  j'oung   man,    or 


READIANA. 


313 


young'  woman,  is  hot  and  cold  by  turns  ; 
but  does  not  like  to  show  too  much  impa- 
tience. However,  in  time,  he  begins  to 
fear  he  is  befooled.  He  calls,  and  will 
hare  an  answer  one  way  or  other.  Then 
a  further  short  delay  is  required  to  re- 
peruse,  or  to  consider.  That  delay  is 
really  wanted  to  copy  the  MS.  by  a  ma- 
chine. The  manuscript  is  returned  with 
a  compliment ;  but  the  author  is  told  he 
is  not  yet  quite  ripe  for  publication  :  he 
is  paternally  advised  to  study  certain 
models  (British)  and  encouraged  to  bring 
another  MS.  improved  by  these  counsels. 
Ods  Nestor  !  it  reads  like  criticism,  and 
paternal  advice.  The  novice  yields  his 
own  judgment;  sighs  many  times  if  he  is 
a  male,  if  female  has  a  little  gentle  cry 
that  the  swine  earth  is  tenanted  by  are 
not  asked  to  pity  nor  even  comprehend  ; 
and  the  confiding'  American  youth,  think- 
ing gray  hairs  and  grave  advice  must  be 
trustworthy,  sets  to  work  to  discover  the 
practical  merit  that  must  lie  somewhere 
or  other  at  the  bottom  of  British  medi- 
ocrity and  "decent  debility;"  he  never 
suspects  that  the  sole  charm  of  these 
mediocre  models  lies  not  in  the  British 
platitudes  and  rigmarole,  but  in  the 
Latin  word  gratis.  While  thus  employed, 
he  sees,  one  fine  day,  some  sketches  of 
life  in  California,  Colorado,  or  what  not, 
every  fact  and  idea  of  which  has  been 
stolen  from  his  rejected  MS.,  and  diverted 
from  its  form,  and  rewoi'ded,  and  printed  ; 
while  he,  the  native  of  a  mighty  conti- 
nent, has  been  sent  away,  for  mundane 
instruction,  to  the  inhabitants  of  a  pen- 
insula on  the  north  coast  of  France.  The 
poor  novice  had  contributed  a  real,  though 
crudish,  novelty  to  literature,  as  any 
American  can  by  opening  his  eyes  in 
earnest,  and  writing  all  he  sees.  It  was 
rejected  for  reasons  that  sounded  well, 
but  were  all  trade  pretexts  stereotyped 
these  manjr  years,  though  new  to  each 
novice  in  his  turn ;  and  now  the  truth 
comes  out  ;  it  was  not  worth  buying 
cheap;  but  it  was  well  worth  stealing 
in  a  nation  where  the  Legislature  plays 
the  part  of  Satan  and  teaches  men 
the  habit  of  stealing  from  authors,  a 
habit    which,    once    acquired,     is    never 


dropped  nor  restrained  within  any  fixed 
limits. 

What  must  be  the  feelings  of  the  poor 
young  man,  or  woman,  so  bubbled,  so 
swindled,  and  so  basely  robbed,  because 
he  trusted  a  trader  well-to-do,  and  did 
not  take  him  for  a  ticket-of-leave  man 
turned  out  of  Sing  Sing  into  a  store? 
And  now  go  behind  the  swindle,  and  see 
how  the  geographical  amendment  of  the 
eighth  commandment,  and  the  local  va- 
riation of  the  golden  rule  prepare  Dives 
for  heaven  in  spite  of  parables. 

'•'  Rob  the  British  author  of  his  compo- 
sition, by  machinery,"  says  Congress. 
"  We  will  stop  his  volumes  at  our  ports  : 
but  we  will  connive  at  one  volume  pass- 
ing, for  the  use  of  theft,  for  theft  is  all 
sanctifying ;  and  you  have  but  to  take 
this  one  volume  and  wed  his  stolen  com- 
position to  bought  vehicles,  for  mind  you 
must  only  swindle  the  British  author ; 
you  must  not  swindle  a  Briton  unless  he 
is  an  author,  nor  an  author  unless  he  is  a 
Briton.  As  for  God  Almighty,  we  have 
a  great  respect  for  Him — in  the  proper 
place,  and  that-  is  church ;  but  out  of 
church  He  has  not  looked  into  these  lit- 
tle matters  so  closely  as  we  have.  He 
is  addicted  to  general  rules;  and  local 
distinctions  have  escaped  Him.  We  are 
more  discriminating." 

But  observe  the  result.  The  publisher 
goes  on;  "Excelsior"  is  his  motto. 
Taught  to  pillage  the  British  author  by 
a  miraculously  clever  machine,  the  press, 
he  invents  another  machine  and  pillages 
the  native  author.  That  machine  is  also 
a  kind  of  press,  and  a  clever  one :  for, 
like  the  compositor  and  the  press  com- 
bined, it  separates  the  author's  words 
from  his  paper,  and  steals  them  with  a 
view  to  wedding  the  cream  of  the  compo- 
sition gratis  to  other  pieces  of  paper 
honestly  bought,  and  selling  the  bought 
paper  and  the  stolen  ideas  of  the  author 
without  regard  to  his  nationality.  What 
does  this  poor  boy  gain  by  being  an 
American  at  home  ?  He  would  be  safer 
out  of  bounds.  No  British  publisher 
would  so  abuse  his  confidence. 

Miss  Leclercq,  an  English  actress,  set- 
tled in  the  United  States,  purchased  not 


314 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


long-  ago  an  original  play  of  an  American 
author.  She  had  not  played  it  many 
nights  when  it  was  stolen  by  means  of 
shorthand  writers,  and  manuscripts  sold. 
When  she  came  to  tour  the  Union  with 
her  new  American  piece  honestly  paid  for, 
she  found  it  was  valueless,  being  stolen 
and  stale.  No  Legislature  can  place  un- 
natural limits  to  fraud,  and  say  to  theft, 
"Thus  far  shalt  thou  come  and  no  far- 
ther, and  here  shall  thy  dirty  wa 
stayed."' 

You  produce  a  drama  in  England  ;  it  is 
taken  down  shorthand  for  the  United 
An  Englishman's  unpublished 
play  only  escapes  theft  or  colorable  pi- 
racy m  the  Males  by  failure.  Meril  is 
rewarded  by  pillage. 

But  I  hope  enough  has  been  shown  to 
prove  that  a  legislature  and  its  judges 
launch  its  people  into  illimitable  fraud, 
when  they  pass  geographical  amendments 
upon  the  eighth  commandment  and  the 
golden  rule,  and  defile  aon  law 

with  pettifogging  distinctions,  the  fruil 
of  corruption  and  sophistry,  which  are 
bad  in  law,  grossly  immoral,  revolting  to 
common  sense  and  the 
impartial  men.  and  contradicted  by  the 
usage  of  the  old  kingdom,  and  thi 
and  the  words,  of  our  common  ancestors. 

I  leave  that,  and  go  to  public  expedi- 
ency.   Ishallprpve  the  fivefold  iniquity 
is  bad  public  policy;  thai   the  American 
reading   public    is    between    two 
robbed  of  fre  swell  the 

taxes,  and  robbed  of  a  national  literature. 
and  a  national  drama,  to  gratify  one  of 
the  smallest  cliques  in  the  nation;  and 
this  without  oil  her  the  nation  or  th< 
gaining  or  saving  one  single  cent.  So 
that  the  thing  is  suicidal  kleptomania. 
And  this  I  say  is  one  of  the  bitterest 
wrongs  of  authors — that  sooner  than  not 
pillage  them,  men  will  hurt  themselves, 
and  will  cut  their  own  throats,  to  wound 
an  author.  Charles  Reade. 


ELEVENTH    LETTER. 

THE   FOUR    Foes. 

Sir — Outside  these  letters  and  Mr. 
Reverdy  Johnson's,  international  copy- 
right and  stage-right  are  shrouded  in 
four  thick  fogs  —  legal,  moral,  verbal, 
arithmetical. 

1  read  what  is  written  over  the  water, 
and  grope  for  an  idea.  In  vain:  it  is  all 
verbal  and  arithmetical  fog. 

Verbal  fog  .1  — They  can't  get  along 
without  calling  copyright  and  stage- 
right  monopolies ;  but  they  dare  no1  risk 
650  to  £150  upon  that  fallacy,  anil  il  is  an 
a Ql  fallacy  tii  international 

patent-righl  is  a  monopoly  :  and  it  cannot 
be  used  to  defend  tin-  American  Legisla- 
ture, because   that    Legislature,    for  the 

last    hundred    years,    has    declared    copy- 
i  be  property,    in    the   laws  of   the 
separate  States  and    the  laws  of  I 
public,  which  these  ignorant    citizens  had 
begin  to  read. 
B. — But  a  more  delicious  piece  ofverbal 
fog  is  this — they  say,  "  We  shall  not  give 
up  free  trade  in  books  to  please  tin'  Brit- 
ishers."    Free  t  rade  in    i ks,  quotha  ! 

why  it  does  not  exist  in  the  0 Free 

-,    not     freebooting.     Free    trade 
buying  and  selling,  unburdened  by 

Now  there  is  thirty  per  cent 
duty  on  foreign  books  at  the  A  : 
ports,  and  freebooting  in  copyrights  can 
never  supply  the  place  of  free  trade,  for 
copyright  is.  in  money,  only  seven  per 
cent  on  retail  prio  and  as  for  stage- 
right,  that  does  not  take  a  cent  from  the 
public.  The  prices  of  an  Anierican  theater 
are  jusl  the  same  whena  play  is  paid  for 
ii.  By  theft  of  a  foreigner's  stage- 
right  the  American  public  has  lost  a  na- 
tional drama ;  but  it  has  never  gained 
nor  saved  the  millionth  of  a  cent  since  the 
country  was  colonized. 

International  stage-right  is  not  offered 
by  those  who  object  to  internal  ional  copj'- 
right.  These  arithmeticians  draw  no  dis- 
tinction. Against  international  copy- 
right and  stage-right  every  one  of  their 
arguments  rests  on  the  notion  that  the 
main  expense  of  a  book,  or  of  a  seat  in  a 
theater,  is  the  dramatist's  fee,   and  the 


BEADIANA. 


315 


fee  which  copyright  enables  a  book  au- 
thor to  extort  directly  from  the  publisher 
anil  indirectly  from  the  public  purchaser. 
Of  course,  so  impudent  a  falsehood  is  never 
stated.  But  why  ?  Statement  is  not  the 
weapon  of  a  liar,  nor  of  a  self-deceiver. 
Both  these  personages  convey — insinuate 
— suggest — assume.  They  never  state. 
Clear  statement  and  detail  are  anti- 
dotes to  the  subtle  poison  of  vague  fal- 
lacies. But  just  test  their  public  argu- 
ments, and  see  if  you  can  find  one  which 
does  not  convey,  in  a  fog  of  words  and 
figures,  that  the  author's  fee  is  the  main 
expense  of  a  book.  One  salaried  writer 
not  only  takes  this  ground,  but,  as  piracy 
has  deprived  Americans  of  their  own 
judgment,  and  made  them  provincial  fog- 
echoes  of  British  muddleheads,  he  re- 
peats, with  true  provincial  credulity, 
Macaulay's  Fog  Epigram,  for  the  in- 
struction of  his  countrymen.  This  done, 
and  very  old  London  fog  offered  to  New 
York  for  modern  sunshine,  he  infers 
fairly  enoug-h — because  the  inference  is 
his  own  —  that  if  domestic  copyright  is 
so  heavy  a  tax  on  the  public,  a  State 
should  hesitate  to  extend  the  injustice  to 
foreign  nations.  Very  well,  young  gen- 
tleman :  I  have  no  quarrel  writh  you.  If 
Macaulay  is  right,  you  are  right. 

A  second  rate  rhetorician  may  be  a 
babe  in  logic.  Macaulay,  in  this  very 
speech,  called  copyright  "'  a  monopoly 
in  hooks,"  and  that  is  verbal  fog,  as  I 
have  shown.  The  only  monopoly  in  books 
nowadays  is  a  trade  monopoly  held  by 
publishers,  and  established  by  custom, 
not  law.  As  for  copyrig-ht,  it  is  a  singu- 
larly open  property ;  w7hy  every  man, 
woman,  and  child,  in  the  Republic  or 
the  Empire,  who  can  fill  a  sheet  of  paper, 
can  create,  enjoy,  and  bequeath  a  copy- 
right, though  a  minor,  and  in  case  of  co- 
heirs it  is  distributable  like  other  personal 
property.  It  is  a  property  bounded  only 
by  nature. 

Fog  epigrams  are  for  our  amusement, 
not  our  instruction,  and  Macaulay  "s  is 
bottled  essence  of  arithmetical  fog. 

"Copyright,"  says  he,  ''is  a  tax  on 
readers  to  give  a  bounty  to  authors." 

Now  we  will  let  in  a  srleam  of  arithmet- 


ical sunshine  on  this.  Writers  are  hu- 
man beings  with  stomachs.  They  cannot 
write  masterpieces,  as  Duns  Scotus  copied 
the  Bible,  during  the  throes  of  starvation. 
They  must  be  paid,  copyright  or  no  copy- 
right ;  and  an  author's  copyright  has  a 
special  operation  on  a  pirate,  hut  none 
on  the  reader.  Whether  an  author  is 
paid  by  wages  or  \>y  copyright,  his  re- 
muneration must  equally  fall  on  the  pub- 
lic purchaser.  Macaulay,  therefore,  has 
taken  a  distinction  where  there  is  no  dif- 
ference. The  Anglo-Saxon  muddlehead 
is  always  doing  this.  It  is  his  great  in- 
tellectual excellence,  and  makes  him  the 
ridicule  of  Europe. 

However,  the  great  vice  of  his  fog  epi- 
gram is  "  FKAUDULENT  SELECTION."  It 
picks  out  of  many  legitimate  profits  a 
single  one,  and  conceals  the  others.  If 
just  profits  on  human  labor,  etc.,  were 
taxes,  which  they  are  not,  every  edition 
of  a  work  would  represent  the  following 
taxes — 

1.  The  rag-picker's  profit.  2.  The  paper- 
merchant  and  his  men.  3.  The  printer 
and  his  men.  4.  The  binder  and  his  men. 
5.  The  publisher  and  his  staff.  6.  The 
author.  7.  The  retail  bookseller.  8.  The 
advertising  column.  These  are  all  taxes 
and  bounties,  as  much  as  is  the  author's 
remuneration,  be  it  wages  or  copyright. 
To  be  sure,  if  any  one  of  these  characters 
makes  an  excessive  profit,  compared  with 
the  others,  that  might  be  called  a  bounty. 
And  that  reminds  me — was  not  Macau- 
lay's  Fog  Epigram  preceded  by  another 
which  said.  "Publishers  drink  their  wine 
out  of  authors  skulls  ?  " 

Well,  if  any  one  gets  a  bounty,  or  ex 
cessive  profit,  it  is  not  the  copyrighted 
author,  and  I  don't  think  it  is  the  pub- 
lisher—  epigram  apart.  The  public  re- 
sult of  these  copyright  transactions  is 
this — 

The  paper  merchants  are  rich. 

The  printers  are  rich. 

The  hinders  are  well-to-do,  but  few. 

The  publishers  are  well-to-do.  But  I 
deny  that  they  owe  that  to  books. 

The  author's  are  the  poorest  creators  of 
valuable  property  on  the  face  of  the  ea  ith. 

To  descend  to  details.     The  retail  dealer 


316 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


gets  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  retail 
price.  All  that  authors  of  books,  as  a 
class,  extort  by  means  of  copyright,  is 
seven  per  cent  on  the  retail  price,  which 
is  10  per  cent  on  the  publisher's  net  re- 
turns. So  much  for  the  comparative  tax 
the  reader  pays  to  the  author  and  seven 
more  trailers.  Now  for  the  bounty.  This 
can  only  be  ascertained  by  measuring 
the  work  done  against  the  remuneration. 
Price  of  a  book  to  the  oppressed  reader — 
say  1  dollar,  or  4s.  Value  of  the  paper, 
printing,  binding,  advertisements,  45c, 
or  thereabouts;  of  the  composition,  55c. 
Sole  creator  of  the  composition,  the  au- 
thor; his  remuneration  i  per  cent,  his 
share  of  t  he  producl  ion  wort  h  55  per  cent . 
Droll  bounty  this  '.  For  passing  the  book 
tli rough  his  hands,  often  on  sale  or  return, 
the  retailer  gets  25  percent.  What  the 
other  traders  and  workmen  get,  I  cannot 
say,  nor  is  it  necessary.  Enoug 
they  are  all  richer  than  the  authors. 
Now  compare  the  arithmetical  fog  of 
,\  and  ins  Transatlantic  echo 
with  this  gleam  of  arithmetical  sunshine. 

The  American  Legislature  now  knows 
the  worst.  Seven  percent  on  the  retail 
price  does  domestic  cbpyrighl  enable 
authors,  one  with  another,  to  screw  out 
of  a  book.  Seven  per  cent  is  all  we  ex- 
pect, or  hope,  or  ask,  from  the  greal 
Republic,  and  all  the  American  author 
will  ever  gel  in  England. 

The  misfortune  of  authors  is  thii — they 
cannot,  as  a  class,  secure  any  remunera- 
tion at  ail  except  through  copyright. 
But  copyright  effects  this  just  end  by 
unpopular  means,  li  stops  a. I  sal.'  till  it 
secures  a  modest  remuneration.  Then 
men,  forgetting  that  the  stoppage  of  sale 
is  not  the  end. but  only  thai  severe  means 
to  a  just  end  which  theheart  less  dishonesty 
of  mankind  makes  necessary,  fail  into 
needless  fear  of  the  tyrannical  means  that 
leads  to  a  mild  result.  This  sentiment  it 
is  which  leads  to  a  misgiving  in  the 
United  States  that  international  copy- 
right would  be  abused  to  enhance  the 
prices  of  English  books.  Americans  do 
not  really  know  our  book  trade,  and  are 
led  to  natural  but  erroneous  notions  of 
English  prices  by  seeing  the  three-volume 


novel  advertised  at  31s.  6d.  But  the 
truth  is  we  have  a  rotteu  trade  for  the 
upper  ten  thousand,  and  a  healthy  trade 
lor  the  nation.  The  rotten  trade  is  the 
hiring  trade  :  of  course,  it  operates  on 
books  just  as  it  does  on  pianofortes — it 
reduces  the  customers  *to  a  handful,  and 
artificial  prices  become  a  necessity  of  that 
one  narrow  market.  The  31s.  3d.  is  all 
humbug,  the  public  does  not  buy  a  copy, 
the  sale  is  confined  to  the  libraries,  and 
the  real  price  is  15s.  to  18s.,  if  by  a  popu- 
lar author,  but  otherwise  9s.  to  12s.  But 
it  is  a  calamitous  system,  encourages  the 
writing  of  rubbish,  and  enables  the  libra- 
rian, whose  customers  are  a  class  born  to 
be  humbugged,  to  hold  back  the  good 
book,  and  substitute  the  trash,  with  dis- 
honest excuses,  in  tin-  credulous  country 
customer's  parcel.  But  so  far  from  cling- 
ing to  tins  rotten  trade,  intelligent 
authors  ami  publishers  in  this  country 
would  gladly  see  it  done  away  with,  and 
the  universal  habit  of  buying  books  re- 
stored :  and  I.  for  one.  look  to  the 
American  publishers  to  help  us  in  this 
with  their  sounder  system  :  for  under 
just  laws,  when  a  sound  system  en- 
counters an  unsound,  it  is  always  the  un- 
sound that  gives  way.  Below  the  above 
rotten  trade  lies  the  true  trade  of  the 
country — good  books  at  moderate  prices 
— and  some  books  and  periodicals  at 
wonderfully  small  prices.  These  vfry 
novels,  sold  to  the  libraries  at  fabulous 
price-,  are  sold  to  the  public  in  one 
volume  at  6s.,  5s.,  and  2s.  At  2s.  they 
are  in  boards,  with  an  illustration  out  side, 
and  a  vignette. 

To  show  what  a  bugbear  copyright  is 
in  books  of  durable  sale.  American  pub- 
lishers can't  produce  such  a  volume  for 
50c,  by  stealing  the  composition,  as  the 
English  publishers  do,  paying  copyright. 

1  submit  to  you  specimens  of  cheap 
publications  under  copyright,  and  I  chal- 
lenge the  American  publishers  to  match 
them  with  cheap  piratical  books  or 
papers. 

However,  there  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun.  The  fear  that  British  authors 
or  the  assignees  of  their  American  copy- 
rights  might  stand   out    for  our  library 


READIAXA. 


317 


prices  in  the  United  States  is  an  old  mis- 
giving which  has  had  its  day  in  England. 
Queen  Anne's  Parliament  had  much  such 
a  fear.  Well!  What  did  they  do  ?  Why, 
provided  against  it  in  a  section  giving  a 
right  of  complaint  to  several  great  func- 
i  ii ma ries,  or  any  one  of  them,  and  invest- 
ing those  dignitaries  with  special  powers 
to  compel  the  publication  on  reasonable 
terms.  The  precaution  proved  quite 
superfluous  ;  for  not  one  single  human 
being  was  so  perverse  as  to  lock  up  a 
good  book,  or  sell  it  at  a  price  the  public 
could  not  afford.  The  section  was  a  dead 
letter,  and  is  now  repealed.  However,  if 
the  Legislature  of1  the  United  States  is 
uneasy  on  this  head,  it  is  not  for  us,  who 
ask  a  great  boon,  to  make  childish  diffi- 
culties. Here  is  the  cure  in  a  stroke  of 
the  pen  : 

"  And  that  the  price  of  books  written 
by  British  subjects,  but  papered,  printed, 
and  bound  in  the  United  States,  as  here- 
inbefore enacted,  may  not  be  unduly  en- 
hanced, be  it  enacted  that  the  proprietor 
of  the  copyright  in  any  such  work  shall 
be  compelled  to  publish,  or  cause  the  same 
to  be  published,  in  the  United  States, 
within  the  times  hereinbefore  specified,  at 
a  reasonable  price,  not  exceeding  the 
highest  price  that  is  demanded  for  a  book 
of  the  same  character,  size,  and  quality, 
written  by  an  American  citizen,  and  pub- 
lished at,  or  about,  the  time ;  and  the 
price  of  such  work  shall  be  duly  notified 
and  advertised  in  three  journals  of  large 
circulation  seven  days  before  publication, 
and,  should  the  price  so  advertised  appear 
excessive,  it  shall  be  lawful  for  any  person 

to  lodge  a  complaint  with [here 

enumerate    the    functionaries],    and   the 

on  the  said  complainant  giving 

security  for  costs  and  offering  evidence, 
shall  have  authority  to  suspend  the  pub- 
lication and  hear  the  evidence  without 
delay,  and,  if  the  price  advertised  be  ex- 
cessive, shall  affix  a  just  and  reason- 
able price,  provided  always  that  in  those 
cases  where  the  book  shall  be  published 
for  the  foreign  proprietor  by  an  agent  be- 
ing a  native  of  the  United  States,  the 
agent,  or  proprietor,  shall  be  allowed  to 
add  the  reasonable  fee  of  the  agent  to  the 


price  of  the  said  book."  Add  a  clause 
giving  various  and  large  discretionary 
powers  to  the  said  judges. 

If,  with  all  these  safeguards  to  the 
American  public,  to  the  stationers,  and 
the  public,  international  stage  -  light, 
against  which  no  objection  has  ever  been 
offered,  and  international  copyright,  both 
properties  that  belong  to  us  by  common 
law,  are  both  refused  to  the  American 
and  British  author,  while  international 
patent-right  is  enacted,  and  yields  a  bal- 
ance of  £300,000  a  year,  British  money, 
to  American  citizens,  then  justice  is  noth- 
ing, fair  play  is  nothing,  humanity  to 
those  men  living,  whom  the  Republic 
worships  dead,  is  nothing,  and  a  national 
literature  is  nothing,  and  it  is  nothing  lor 
a  great  nation  which,  in  the  heat  and 
misery  of  its  war,  could  find  pity  and 
substantial  generosity  for  one  set  of  Brit- 
ish subjects,  and  by  so  doing  has  covered 
itself  with  glory — it  is  nothing,  I  say,  for 
that  noble  nation  to  single  out  another 
set  of  British  subjects  less  improvident, 
and  more  deserving,  and  make  war  upon 
those  worthy,  weak,  and  unarmed  men  in 
time  of  peace. 

Could  I  gain  the  ear  of  one  Ulysses 
Grant,  I  think  he  would  side  with  the 
weak  ;  and  if  he  did  the  quintuple  iniquity 
would  soon  fall ;  for  it  is  not  so  well  de- 
fended as  Richmond  was. 

Charles  Reade. 


TWELFTH   LETTER. 

Sik — Permit    me    to    head   this   short 
letter 

THE   IMPENITENT  THIEF. 

This  is  a  character  disapproved  in  Jewish 
history.  But  he  has  it  all  his  own  way 
with  us  in  Anglo-Saxony.  One  of  his 
traits  is  to  insult  those  whom  he  pillages. 
He  puts  one  hand  in  our  pockets,  and 
shakes  the  other  fist  in  our  faces.  As  an 
example  I  note  some  sneers  by  a  Mr.  Pas- 
coe,  and  other  professors  of  moral  and 


318 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


arithmetical  fog-,  that  authors,  in  asking 
for  international  copyright,  show  an  ex- 
cessive love  of  money.  That  remark  ap- 
plies more  to  those  who  covet  the  prop- 
erty of  others,  than  to  those  who  only 
covet  their  own.  It  is  a  sneer  that  comes 
as  ill  from  salaried  writers,  who  cannot 
be  pillag  toes  from  pensioned  law- 

yers; and  it  is  a  heartless  sneer:  for 
they  know  by  history — if  they  know  any- 

■    :  brough 
centuries  of  pa    |  misery,  and 

dation,  and  have  only  arrived  a1 
competence  and   decent  poverty.     Popu- 
lar authors  and  even  their  in- 
come docs  not  ap]  of  the  pros- 
perous lawyer,  divmc.  physician,  a 

.    There  arc  two  actors  about,  who 

■..eh  made  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  pounds  by  playing  a  single  part 
in  two  plays,  for  which  the  two  authors 
have  no;  received  two  thousand  pounds. 
The  pamtcr  has  two  greal  markets,  his 
picture  and  his  copyright.  The  author 
has  hui  one.  Internationa]  copyright 
will  merely  give  him  two.  ami  rai 
to  the  painter's  commercial  level.  No 
aid  hor  has  ever  lei't  a  foil  une  made  by 
writing.  Dickens,  the  sole  apparent  ex- 
ception, was  a  reader  and  a  publisher. 
As  a  rule,  w  hen  a  respectable  author  dies, 
either  he  had  independent  means,  or  the 
hat  goes  round.     If  authors  are  to  be  re- 

i    in  Anglo-Saxony,  they  must    not 
be  poor :  they  musl  have  better  terms  at 
home,  or  international  copyright,  ' 
the   tremendous   advance  of    price  in   the 
necess  iri<  s  of  life.     Three  or  fou 
individuals,  such  as  Milton  and  S 

nd  dignified.     But  they 
were  n  Dignified  poverty  in  a 

class  is  a  chimera.    It  never  existed.    The 

ber  of  a  class  is  the  character  of 
the  majority  in  that  class:  now  no  ma- 
jority has  ever  resisted  a  strong  tempta- 
tion, and  that  is  why  all  greatly  tempted 

3  fall  as  classes.  Johnson  knew  more 
than  Camden,  and  he  says,  '•Poverty  is 
the  worst  of  all  temptations  ;  it  is  inces- 
sant, and  leads,  soon  or  late,  to  loss  of 
self-respect,  and  of  the  world's  respect." 
The  hypocrite  Camden  demanded  an  au- 
thor with  aspiring  genius  and  no  eye  to 


the  main  chance.  The  model  he  demanded 
crossed  his  path  in  Oliver  Goldsmith  ;  but 
the  hypocrite  Camden  treated  his  beau- 
ideal  with  cold  hauteur,  because  his  beau- 
ideal  was  poor  :  the  same  hypocrite  was 
to  be  seen  arm-in-arm  with  Garrick,  for 
lie  had  lots  of  money. 
Oliver    Goldsmith,   next    to    Voltaire, 
greatest    genius  in  Europe:  on 
the  news  of  his  death   Burke  burst   into 
ud  Reynolds   laid  down  his  brush 
and  devoted  the  day  to  tender  regrets. 
I  now  cite  a  passage  verbatim  from  the 
■  n  Goldsmith  in  the  "Biographia 
ica  :  " — "  It  was  at  first  in 
to  bury  him  in  Westminster  Abbey  :   and 
his    pall  was   to   have   been   supported  by 
the  Marquis  of  Lansdowne,  Lord   Louth. 
Sir  Joshua   Reynolds.  Mr.  Burke  and  Mr. 
Garrick.     But    a    slight  inspect  ion  of  his 
lowed  the  impropriety  of  incurring 

>■•    :se.      Hi'    was    ps V 

I '  uiple  burial-ground,  at- 
tended by  Mr.  Hugh   Kelly,   .Mr.    llawcs, 
.  Joseph  Palmer,  and  a  lev, 

acquaintances." 
[f  the  deceased  genius  was  poor,  Rey- 

and  <  iarnck.  and  the  rest ,  were 
rich.  They  could  have  secured  him  the 
place  he  deserved  in  the  national  temple. 
But  no  :  he  was  poor :   and  ohscn    . 

re  ready  to  lay  genius  in  West- 
Abbey  had  it  been  wealthy,  would 

Hot   even   follow  it  to  the    Temple    I 

when  they  found  it  was  poor.     The  fact  is, 
that  great  immortal  genius  was  thing  into 
the   earth    like    a    dog.  and    to    t  ! 
nobody  knows  where  he  lies. 

I  now  cite  verbatim  from  the  "  Life  of 
Mrs.  Oldfield  :  "— "  The  corpse  of  Mrs. 
Hdfield  was  carried  from  tier  house 
in  Grosvenor  Street  to  the  Jerusalem 
Chamber,  where  it  lay  in  state,  and  after- 
ward to  the  Abbey,  the  pall  being  sup- 
ported by  the  Lord  Delawar,Lord  Harvey, 
the  Right  Honorable  Bubb  Doddington, 
and  other  men  of  ton." 

This  lady  was  a  good  actress,  and  had 
lived  in  open  shame  with  Mr.  Maynwar- 
ing  and  Brigadier  Churchil,  and  had  lots 
of  money.  Therefore  this  artist  was 
buried   in   the  Abbey,  and    the    greater 


BEAD! AX  A. 


319 


artist.  Goldsmith,  being  pure,  but  poor, 
had  the  grave  of  a  dog. 

In  these  two  extracts  you  see  the  world 
unmasked  by  its  own  hand,  not  mine. 
This,  my  Lord  Camden,  is  that  dirty 
world,  of  which  you  were  a  gilt  lump. 
This  is  the  real  world  as  it  is,  and  was, 
and  always  will  be.  Many  authors  are 
womanish ;  so  they  listen  to  the  flatteries 
that  cost  nothing,  and,  when  they  find  it 
all  humbug,  they  sit  down  and  whine  for 
a  world  less  hollow  and  less  hard.  But 
authors,  who  are  men,  take  the  world  as 
as  fchey  find  it,  see  its  good  sense  at  the 
bottom  of  its  brutality,  and  grind  their 
teeth,  and  swear  that  the  public  weasel 
shall  not  swindle  them  into  that  unjust 
poverty,  which  the  public  hog  despises  in 
an  author,  and  would  in  an  apostle. 

Charles  Reade. 


THIRTEENTH  LETTER. 

Sir — An  egotist  has  been  defined  a  man 
who  will  burn  his  neighbor's  house  down 
to  cook  himself  two  eggs. 

If  it  be  true  that  two  or  three  American 
publishers  are  the  sole  obstacle  to  inter- 
national stage-right  and  copyright,  the 
definition  applies,  so  great  is  the  injury 
they  do;  so  little,  if  any,  the  advantage 
to  themselves.  How  would  international 
stage-right  injure  them  ?  Yet  it  is  they 
who  crush  it,  and  demoralize  theatrical 
business,  and  kill  the  national  drama. 
How  would  even  international  copyright, 
on  the  conditions  I  have  offered,  injure 
them  ?  It  could  not  hurt  them  at  present ; 
it  must  improve  their  condition  in  the  end. 
The  professors  of  arithmetical  fog  call  it 
"a,  present  to  British  authors."  The 
idots  !  is  it  any  more  a  boon  to  English 
than  to  American  authors  ?  It  is  a 
present  to  neither.  On  the  contrary,  it 
offers  the  publisher  his  highest  remunera- 
tion for  his  smallest  outlay.  Take  a 
popular  English  novel — it  is  not  unusual 
to  sell  120,000  copies  at  a  dollar.  Under 
piracy  by  law  established,  one  publisher 


does  not  get  the  sale.  Often  the  thing  is 
torn  to  pieces  ;  but  let  us  limit  the  publi- 
cation to  four  persons ;  assuming  that 
each  sells  about  30,000  copies  at  a  profit 
of  25  cents,  that  gives  $7,500.  I  admit 
that  under  international  copyright  ?  per 
cent  must  be  deducted  for  the  British 
right.  But  then  the  publisher  who  pays 
the  Briton,  will  sell  all  the  books.  Now 
120,000  copies  at  a  profit  of  25  cents  minus 
7=  18  gives  a  total  of  $21,600.  And  here 
you  may  see  the  reason  why  copyrighted 
books  can  be  sold  cheaper  than  pirated 
books,  yet  yield  a  g-ood  iirofit. 

Publication  of  books  is  in  a  general  way 
a  poor  business.  Men  of  enterprise  and 
talent  would  not  descend  to  it  but  for  the 
great  prizes.  I  therefore  reason  fairly 
in  taking  a  book  of  large  sale  for  trade 
sample ;  not  that  120,000  copies  is  a  very 
large  sale  in  the  United  States ;  I  know 
books  that  have  quadrupled  that  figure  in 
a  year's  sale. 

Under  international  copyright  the 
American  publisher,  dealing  either  by 
purchase  or  otherwise  with  British  copy- 
right, could  also  levy  a  just  and  moderate 
tariff  on  the  400  or  500  newspapers  that 
now  steal  any  popular  British  book.  So 
much  for  the  American  side.  But  the 
American  publisher  would  also,  by  his 
position  and  intelligence,  secure  many  of 
the  American  copyrights  in  England,  and, 
even  if  he  contented  himself  with  an 
author's  percentage  there,  that  would  be 
at  least  a  set-off.  though  it  needs  no  set- 
off. But  if,  on  the  contrary,  he  should 
take  the  public  advice  I  have  given  him, 
and  have  a  place  of  business  in  London — 
which  is  the  great  game — all  manner  of 
lucrative  combinations  would  arise  under 
international  copyright.  That  great  boon 
would  not  change  the  nature  of  authors 
and  make  them,  as  a  class,  hard  bargain- 
ers or  even  good  men  of  business.  They 
deserve  7  per  cent  in  each  market,  but 
they  would  not  be  sharp  enough  to  get  it 
one  time  in  thirty. 

When  you  add  to  all  this  that  inter- 
national copyright  would  relieve  the 
American  author  of  the  competition  of 
stolen  goods  which  is  stifling  him,  and 
make   the    most   intellectual   country   in 


320 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


the  world  a  hotbed  of  intellectual  pro- 
ductions, by  which  the  American  pub- 
lishers must  necessarily  profit  most,  their 
opposition  to  international  justice  and 
public  policy  will,  I  hope,  cease;  for  it 
would  be  egotism  beyond  the  definition 
supra  ;  it  would  be  the  blind  egotism, 
thai  sacrifices  national  honor  and  the 
clear  interests  of  all  producers,  and  of 
the  public  reader,  to  one  sham  interest. 

Wit  h  this  letter  I  send  one  to  a  power- 
ful American  firm,  offering-  them  again 
what  I  offered  them  years  ago,  that, 
mi(l<  i-  internal  iona  I  ci  i>.  rig  a.1 .  they  shall 
be  my  London  publishers,  if  they  please, 
and  publish  my  books,  if  they  please,  on 
the  very  terms  1  will  demand  of  them  in 
New  York  :  7  per  cent  on  the  retail  price, 
which  is  10  per  cent  on  the  trade  sale 
price.  As  I  am  popular  in  America,  and 
perhaps  ao  writer  under  international 
copyrighl  could  make  better  bargains, 
and  as  1  pass  for  a  screw,  this  should 
bend  to  convince  reasonable  Americans 
thai  international  copyright,  though  a 
great  boon  to  authors  and  honesl  pub- 
lishers mi  bo1 1>  sides  the  water,  is  qo1  a 
tax  upon  any  one.  Consider— for  pas 
my  books  through  their  hands  in  London 
I  offer  an  American  firm  all  I  will  ask  in 
New  fork  for  having  written  those  bo 
for  having  written  those  books  I  will  ask 
no  more  in  the  United  states  than  I  of- 
fer them  fer  jusl  passing  the  books 
through  their  hands  in  London.  PI 
bring  your  minds  to  bear  on  this,  you 
that   possess  a    mind. 

So  much  for  petty  expediency  and  finan- 
cial fog.  <  lug  bo  stand  in  the 
way  of  national  justice,  national  impar- 
tiality, and  a  national  literature  ?  <  >Ugh1 
classes  so  import  a  nt  as  the  American  au- 
thor, the  American  spectator  of  plays. 
and  the  American  reader,  to  be  mocked 
with  the  title  of  Republicans,  yet  mis- 
governed and  outlawed  by  a  Venetian 
oligarchy,  a  mere  handful  of  short-sighted 
traders,  clinging  blindly  to  piracy  as  some 
men  cling  to  drink,  not  that  it  does  them 
an  atom  of  good,  but  just  because  they 
have  got  into  the  habit  ? 

Those  medisevals  whose  lofty  method — 
conjecture  v.  evidence — Sir  Joseph  Yates 


follows  in  copyright,  discovered  that 
witches  who  rode  upon  the  whirlwind 
and  led  the  storm  could  be  arrested  in 
their  furious  career  by  two  straws  placed 
across.  When  I  consider  with  what  piti- 
able reasons  the  fivefold  iniquity  has 
been  defended,  and  is  even  now  defended, 
against  Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson,  and  these 
letters.  1  seem  to  see  the  men  of  the  dark 
ages  laying  down  their  straws.  Ah!  and 
so  you  think  national  justice,  iionor,  and 
humanity  are  three  old  bedlams  thai  will 
never  pass  your  straws  ?  1  deem  mere  no- 
bly than  you  do  of  the  nation  you  disgrace 
and  mislead.  The  people  that  were  in 
trouble  yet  relieved  the  British  cotton- 
spinners  musl  have  a  hearl  nol  bounded 
by  the  ocean  :  the  nation  thai  could,  at 
a  cost  of  blood  and  treasure,  forego  the 
two-legged  beast  of  burden  and  makethe 
negro  a  man,  must  have  a  cons 
and  our  turn  will  come,  please  God, 
though  my  head  and  hearl  may  both 
have  ceased  to  ache  a1  man's  bad  Logic, 

and  man's  injustice.  Yes.  t  he  grea  t  Re- 
public has  raised  its  negro  to  the  level  of 
a  man  :  it  will  one  day  admit  its  authors 
to  i  he  level  of  a  negro. 

Farewell,  you  four  fogs,  farewell  you 
rogues  and  fools  who  made  them  :  I  leave 
the  pett dogger  who  reasons  a  priori 
against  evidence,  and  divines  thai  the 
common  law  abhors  forfeit  lire  of  a  rigtli 
—  unless  it  is  held  by  an  author — and 
reads  implied  contracts  as  "  exchange  of 
equivalents  "  unless  one  of  t  he  parties  is 
an  author,  and  if  an  author  gives  a  writ- 
ten copy  without  reserve,  and  abandons, 
My  years,  his  right  to  publish, 
-ays  that  is  no  gift  of  the  right  to  pub- 
lish :  but  If,  instead  of  laches  and  neglect 
and  all  that  really  forfeits  a  right,  he 
adds  possession  to  title  and  sells  one  copy 
to  a  man.  says  that  sale  is  a  gift  of  the 
right  of  publication.  I  leave  the  liars, 
idiots,  and  beasts,  who  reason  thus  against 
evidence,  and  call  it  law,  with  one  remark  : 
the  greatest  asses  God  has  ever  made  are 
little  lawyers.  Your  little  lawyer  is  a 
man  who  has  parted  with  the  good  sense 
of  the  layman,  and  has  not  advanced  one 
inch  toward  the  science  of  a  Mansfield  or 
a  Story. 


RE  AD  I  AN  A. 


321 


I  leave  the  men  of  verbal  fog,  the  poor 
addlepates,  who  call  a  mail's  sole  right 
to  sell  his  own  composition  "  monopoly," 
and  his  sole  right  to  sell  his  own  hen  and 
her  chickens,  his  own  seed  and  its  great 
increase,  "  property  ;  "  and  call  free-boot- 
ing- in  copyright  with  a  30  per  cent  tax 
on  books  "  free  trade  in  books." 

I  leave  the  ranting  rogues,  the  roman- 
tic pickpockets,  who  say  that  an  author 
is  to  work  only  for  praise  (against  which 
dispraise  and  foul  scurrility  are  not  to 
weigh,  of  course),  but  that  a  judge  and 
an  archbishop  are  to  work  for  money  as 
well  as  credit — in  a  word,  I  leave  the 
whole  tribe  of  gorillas  and  chimpanzees, 
in  whose  hands  I  found  this  subject,  to 
recommence  their  incurable  gibbering  and 
chattering;  reason  they  never  did,  and 
never  will.  As  for  me,  I  shall  take  leave 
to  rise,  for  a  little  wdiile,  above  their 
dunghill  in  a  fog,  and  speak  as  a  man 
who  by  long  study  of  the  past  has 
learned  to  divine  the  future,  and  is  fit 
to  advise  nations. 

1.  Justice  to  authors  is  the  durable 
policy  of  nations. 

2.  The  habit  of  inventing  is  a  richer 
national  treasure  than  a  pyramid  of 
stolen  inventions. 

3.  Invention  is  on  the  average  the 
highest  and  hardest  form  of  mental 
labor.  It  is  the  offspring  of  necessity, 
and  nursed  by  toil. 

4.  Hence  it  follows  that  in  whatever 
country  invention  can  be  appropriated  by 
direct  theft,  or  adaptation,  or  any  easy 
process  except  purchase,  the  habit  of  in- 
vention is  discouraged,  and  each  act  of 
invention  undersold  and  the  inventor  pun- 
ished. 

5.  Therefore,  by  pirating  from  foreign 
authors,  a  nation  scratches  the  foreign 
author's  finger,  but  cuts  the  native  au- 
thor's throat,  and  turns  its  own  intellec- 
tual sun  into  a  moon,  and  robs  itself  of 
the  habit  of  inventing,  which  is  a  richer 
national  treasure  than  a  pyramid  of 
stolen  inventions.  This  is  a  universal 
truth  :  the  experience  of  Europe  in  every 
age  confirms  it,  and  in  the  United  States 
it  is  a  special  truth,  for  the  Republic  has 
put  justice  and  injustice   side  by  side,  so 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


that  even  a  child  may  see  Avhich  is  the 
more  enduring  policy.  Of  international 
jDatent  right  the  result  has  been  rapid 
and  remarkable.  The  States  were  be- 
hind us  in  invention  ;  they  soon  advanced 
upon  us,  and  caught  us,  and  now  they 
head  us  far.  International  justice  be- 
gan with  a  trade  balance  in  our  fa- 
vor: yet  now  the  States  draw  an  enor- 
mous balance  from  Europe,  and  about 
three  hundred  thousand  a  year  from 
Great  Britain.  Europe  teems  with  the 
material  products  of  American  genius. 
American  patents  print  English  news- 
papers and  sew  Englishmen's  shirts;  a 
Briton  goes  to  his  work  by  American 
clocks,  and  is  warmed  by  American 
stoves  and  cleansed  by  American  dust 
collectors  ;  whereas  my  housemaid,  when 
she  dusts  with  a  British  broom,  only 
drives  it  from  pillar  to  post.  In  a  word, 
America  is  the  leading  nation  in  all  mat- 
ters of  material  invention  and  construc- 
tion, and  no  other  nation  rivals  nor  ap- 
proaches her.  It  is  "  Eclipse  first,  and 
the  rest  nowhere."  .  ,— 

Now  do  but  turn  an  eye  to  the  opposite 
experiment.  What  is  the  position  in  the 
world  of  the  American  author?  Does  he 
keep  pace  with  the  American  patentee? 
Why,  it  is  a  complete  contrast ;  one  is 
up,  the  other  is  down;  one  leads  old 
nations,  the  other  follows  them  :  one  is 
a  sun  diffusing  his  own  light  over  his 
hemisphere  and  ours,  the  other  a  pale 
moon  lighted  by  Europe.  Yet  the 
American  mechanical  inventor  has  only 
the  forces  and  materials  our  mechanical 
inventor  can  command ;  whereas  the 
American  author  has  larger,  more 
varied,  and  richer  materials  than  ours. 
Even  in  fiction,  what  new  material  has 
the  English  artist  compared  with  that 
gold  mine  of  nature,  incident,  passion, 
and  character — life  in  the  vast  Ameri- 
can Republic  ?  Here  you  may  run  on 
one  rail  from  the  highest  civilization  to 
the  lowest,  and  inspect  the  intervening 
phases,  and  write  the  scale  of  man. 
You  may  gather  in  a  month  amid  the 
noblest  scenes  of  nature  the  history  of 
the  human  mind,  and  note  its  progress. 
Here  are  red  man.  black  man,  and  white 
"11 


322 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES  READE. 


man.  With  us  man  is  all  of  a  color, 
and  nearly  all  of  a  piece ;  there  con- 
trasts more  piquant  than  we  ever  see 
spring-  thick  as  weeds  ;  larger  and  more 
natural  topics  ring  through  the  land,  dis- 
cussed with  broader  and  freer  eloquence 
In  the  very  Senate,  the  passions  of  well- 
dressed  men  break  the  bounds  of  conven- 
tion ;  and  nature  and  genuine  character 
speak  out  in  places,  where  with  us  eti- 
quette has  subdued  them  to  a  whisper. 
Land  of  fiery  passions,  and  humors  in- 
finite, you  offer  such  a  garden  of  fruits 
as  Moliere  never  sunned  himself  in,  nor 
Shakespeare  neither.  And  what  food  for 
poetry  and  romance  were  the  feats  of 
antiquity,  compared  with  the  exploits  of 
this  people?  Fifty  thousand  Greeks  be- 
sieged a  Phrygian  city,  fighting  for  a 
rotten  leaf ;  the  person  of  an  adulteress 
without  her  mind.  This  ten  years'  waste 
of  time  is  a  fit  subject  for  satire;  only 
genius  has  perverted  it  into  an  epic; 
what:  cannot  genius  do?  But  what  is 
it  in  itself,  and  what  were  the  puny 
wars  of  Pompey  and  Caesar,  compared 
with  a  cival  war.  where  nol  a  few  thou- 
sand soldiers  met-  on  either  side  to  set  one 
'Pompey  up,  one  Caesar  down;  but  armies 
like  those  "f  Xerxes  encountered  again 
and  again,  lighting  not  for  the  posses- 
sion of  a  wanton,  nor  the  pride  of  a  gen- 
eral, hut  the  integrity  of  a  nation  and  the 
rights  of  man.  Yet  the  little  old  things 
sound  great  and  the  great  new  things 
sound  small,  carent  <jiii<i  rate  sacro. 
~~  The  other  day  man's  greatest  feat  of 
labor  was  the  Chinese  wall.  It  is  dis- 
tanced. An  iron  road  binds  hemispheres 
together.  See  it  carried  over  hill  and 
dale,  through  civilized  and  uncivilized 
countries;  see  the  buffaloes  glare  and 
snort;  and  the  wild  tribes  gallop  to  and 
fro  in  rage  and  terror,  as  civilization 
marches,  with  sounding  tread,  from  sea 
to  sea.  See  iron  labor  pierce  the  bowels 
of  the  mountain,  and  span  the  lake's 
broad  bosom.  It  creeps ;  it  marches  ; 
it  climbs ;  it  soars  ;  it  never  halts ;  the 
savages  arm,  and  saddle  their  wild 
steeds  ;  they  charge  ;  they  fire  ;  they 
wheel  about,  with  flaming  eyes  and  fly- 
ing arrows ;    but    civilization   just   takes 


its  rifle  in  one  hand  and  its  pick  in  the 
other,  and  the  labors  of  war  and  peace 
go  on  together,  and  still  the  mighty  iron 
road  creeps,  climbs,  and  marches  from 
hemisphere  to  hemisphere,  and  sea  to  sea. 

These  are  the  world-wide  feats  that 
toucli  mankind,  and  ought  to  thrill  man- 
kind. Yet  they  go  for  less  than  small 
old  things  done  in  holes  and  corners — 
carent  quia  vate  sacro.  For  there, 
where  the  soil  is  so  fertile,  art  is  sterile. 
Few  are  the  pens  that  glow  with  sacred 
life:  few  great  narrators;  and  net  one 
greal  dramatist.  Read  the  American 
papers  —  you  revel  in  a  world  of  new 
truths,  new  fancies,  and  glorious  crude 
romance,  awaiting  but  the  hand  of  art; 
you  roll  in  gold-dust.  Read  their  dramas 
in-  narratives— How  French  !  How  Brit- 
ish !  How  faint  beside  the  swelling 
themes  life  teems  with  in  this  nation, 
that  is  thinking,  working,  speaking,  liv- 
ing, and  doing  everything  except  writing, 
at  a  rate  of  march  without  a  presenl  rival 
"i   a  pasl   parallel  beneath  I  he  sun. 

The  reason  is  nine-tenths  of  their 
heaven-born  writers  are  nipped  in  the 
bud,  snubbed,  starved,  and  driven  out 
of  immortal  literature  by  piracy  before 
they  can  learn  so  profound  and  difficult 
an  art.  Some  driven  into  business ;  some 
driven  on  to  the  land,  which  there  God, 
in  his  mercy,  has  thrown  open  to  the 
oppressed  ;  some  driven  into  journals 
that   go  bankrupt   by  the  hundred. 

Mr.  Emerson  :  "  There  are  men  in  this 
country  who  can  put  their  thoughts  in 
brass,  in  iron,  stone,  or  wood  ;  who  can 
build  the  best  ships  for  freight,  and  the 
swiftest  for  ocean  race.  Another  makes 
revolvers,  another  a  power  press.  But 
scarcely  one  of  our  authors  lias  thrown 
off  British  swaddling  clothes.  The  greal 
secret  of  the  world-wide  success  of  '  Uncle 
Tom  '  was  its  novelty  :  it  had  something 
peculiarly  American  in  it.  The  works 
of  American  authors  have  been  smothered 
under  English  authors  in  the  American 
market.  Not  only  has  the  wholesale 
system  of  malappropriation  most  injuri- 
ously affected  the  interests  of  living 
American  authors,  but  it  has  a  tendency 
to  dwarf  down  the  original  literature  of 


EEADIANA. 


323 


the  United  States  to  a  servile  copyism, 
and  to  check  the  development  of  the  na- 
tional mind." 

Piracy  is  a  upas  tree.  If  you  reall}- 
love  your  great  Republic,  and  wish  to 
see  it  honored  and  appreciated,  down 
with  that  upas  tree,  and  you  will  lead 
the  world  in  art  as  well  as  in  mechanics. 
The  gorillas  and  chimpanzees  are  not 
ashamed  to  say  that  they  see  no  conse- 
quences of  international  justice,  but  that 
books  will  be  dearer  in  the  States.  Per- 
haps not,  and  for  that  very  reason  we 
don't  look  to  gorillas  for  prescience,  or 
to  chimpanzees  for  prophecy. 

Of  international  copyright  and  stage- 
right  the  following-  are  a  few,  and  only  a 
fewT,  of  the  certain  consequences  : 

1.  The  American  publishers  will  say, 
"  Confound  John  Bull.  We'll  show  him 
we  can  do  without  him."  They  will  read 
American  MS.  with  a  kindlier  eye.  Young 
American  authors  will  get  a  chance  to 
learn  their  art  by  practice. 

2.  American  publishers  will  have  a 
place  of  business  in  London.  Combina- 
tions will  arise  they  never  dreamed  of. 
They  will  do  all  sorts  of  business  with 
our  authors  and  publishers,  and  often 
take  the  whole  property  in  Britain,  her 
colonies,  and  the  States. 

3.  Australia,  seeing  so  good  an  ex- 
ample, will  fall  into  better  practical  ar- 
rangements both  with  Great  Britain  and 
the  States.  Waste  a  few  years  more 
and  she  will  pillage  us  both. 

4.  The  deep  and  sullen  resentment 
British  authors  now  feel  against  the 
American  nation  will  give  way  to  kindly 
and  grateful  feelings.  They  will  go  over 
to  the  States,  not  to  fleece  the  natives 
in  return,  by  reading  poor  lectures  in  a 
country  of  good  lectures,  nor  yet  to  skim 
a  fewy  States  with  jaundiced  eye  and  pub- 
lish shallow  venom  ;  but  to  sojourn, and 
study,  with  keen  and  kindly  eye,  the 
nation  best  worth  studying  in  the  uni- 
versal globe.  From  this  will  arise  great 
pictures  of  American  life  with  some  in- 
accuracies. 

5.  Taught  by  foreigners  their  own 
treasures,  Americans  will  begin  to  take 
bird's-eye  views  of  American  life,  and  we 


shall  get  great  American  narratives  of 
all  sorts,  and,  by-and-by,  a  great  play  or 
two. 

6.  The  American  women,  better  culti- 
vated than  other  women,  reared  with 
larger  minds,  and  less  overburdened  with 
domestic  cares,  will  begin  to  take  their 
true  place  in  Anglo-Saxon  literature.  A 
brilliant  career  awaits  them. 

7.  Americans  are  mortified,  and  justly, 
at  the  sullen  apathy  of  Europe  and  Brit- 
ish indifference.  It  will  soon  cease  when 
the  cause  ceases.  They  have  made  a  bad 
selection  ;  the  Britons  they  should  have 
outlawed  ai'e  the  chimney-sweeps,  not  the 
intellectual  lords  who  guide  public  opinion. 
All  they  do  will  be  noticed  and  criticised 
justly,  and  no  nation  is  the  worse  for 
that. 

8.  International  property  is  a  bond  of 
friendship  and  a  security  for  peace  and 
good-will.  There  will  be  in  each  country 
several  persons  holding  property  in  the 
other,  and  desirous  to  compose  differences, 
not  inflame  them  ;  whereas  the  writer  for 
wages  is  comparatively  reckless,  and  has 
often  jeopardized  peace  with  his  stings. 

9.  Eventuallj'  the  States  will  produce 
beyond  men's  wildest  dreams  at  present. 
Nature  is  rich  ;  we  are  too  apt  to  bound 
her  by  the  nai-row  experience  of  our  own 
life.  Time,  population,  and  encourage- 
ment will  grow  another  Scott,  another 
Cooper,  another  Byron,  and  even  per- 
haps another  Shakespeare ;  for,  under 
equal  rigbts,  intellectual  giants  are  far 
more  likely  to  spring  in  the  States  than 
here.  The  studies  of  Bret  Harte,  the  pas- 
torals of  Carlton,  and  other  true  gleams 
of  genius  that  now  come  from  the  States 
are  like  jets  of  water  forcing  their  way 
through  a  sea-wall.  The  gorillas  and 
chimpanzees  look  at  them,  and  say  "  that 
is  all  the  water  there  is."  To  a  higher 
intelligence  they  show  how  strong  is  na- 
ture, that  any  water  at  all  can  come 
through  the  barrier  of  bad  laws.  Remove 
the  wall,  and  the  infinite  waters  will  flow, 
where  now  those  struggling  jets  reveal 
the  curbed  ocean. 

The  true  lawgiver  is  rare.  For  ages 
senators  have  preferred  party  to  mankind, 
and  it  has  made   them  as  ephemeral  as 


324 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


gad-flies.  Your  Solon  and  Lycurgus 
climbed  hills  above  the  dust  of  strife  and 
the  mists  of  clique,  and  took  a  bird's- 
eye  view  of  all  the  land.  If,  among  my 
American  readers  there  is  one  senator,  to 
whom  the  old  Republican  lawgiver  seems 
a  bigger,  and  a  better,  and  a  more  endur- 
ing man,  than  the  ephemeral  mouthpiece 
of  ephemeral  party,  he  can  play  the  an- 
cient lawgiver  on  a  grander  field  than 
antiquity  afforded .  It  is  not  every  day 
that  a  single  earnest  statesman  can 
brighten  the  tarnished  escutcheon  of  a 
great  and  generous  Republic,  and  heal 
the  deep  wound  of  a  kindred  nation,  cut 
down  a  fivefold  iniquity  and  a  national 
upas  tree,  lay  the  first  stone  of  a  mighty 
literature,  and  earn  the  gratitude  of  1he 
greatest  minds  in  two  great  countries. 
Tins  would  he  to  rise  above  the  mob  of 
senators,  the  noisy  squabblers  of  a  Con- 
gress, and  them  ••whose  talk  is  of  bul- 
locks." If  there  be  such  a  man  at  Wash- 
ington— and  surely  there  must  be  many — 
let  him  hold  out  his  hand  and  grasp  true 
honor,  not  vociferous,  but  lasting;  the 
arts,  immortal  themselves,  confer  immor- 
tal fame,  or  infamy,  on  friend  and  foe  : 
cliques  and  parties  conn'  and  go;  but 
these  flow  on  forever:  and,  though  no 
greasy  palms  applaud  their  champion,  to 
the  bray  of  1  rumpets,  and  the  flare  of  gas, 
a  mild  but  lasting  light,  still  brightening 
as  justice  spreads  and  civilization  marches, 
shall  hover  around  his  living  head,  and 
gild  his  memory  when  dead.  The  words 
of  Reade  are  ended. 

Sir — I  did  intend  to  ixo  into  the  domes- 
tic wrongs  of  authors.  But,  as  a  com- 
mission of  inquiry  is  about  to  collect  facts, 
it  would  be  more  proper,  on  many  ac- 
counts, to  postpone  that  matter.  Besides 
I  have  already  intruded  too  long.  Be 
pleased  to  accept  our  thanks  for  the  sacri- 
fice you  have  made  to  justice  ;  you  have 
allowed  a  worthy  but  unpopular  subject 
to  occupy  many,  many  columns  of  a  pop- 
ular journal,  and  both  American  and 
English  authors  owe  you  a  deep  debt  of 
gratitude,  which,  unfortunately,  we  can 
only  pay  in  words. 

Charles  Reade. 


LETTER    TO    MR.  J.   R.    LOWELL 

(UNITED   STATES   MINISTER), 

ON  INTERNATIONAL  COPY- 
RIGHT. 

19  Albert  Gate.  Knightsbridoe. 
September  2,  1880. 

Dear  Mr.  Lowell  —  You  are  good 
enough  to  desire  my  opinion  upon  a  pro- 
posed Copyright  Treaty  between  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,  "the 
principal  feature  of  which  is  the  grant- 
ing of  Copyright,  provided  the  book  be 
manufactured  in  the  country  so  granting 
it  by  a  subject  or  citizen  thereof  within 
three  months  of  its  publication  by  the 
author." 

To  reply  to  this  outline  I  must  ask  to 
dissect  it  :  for  here  in  one  sentence  are 
two  proposals  that  I  consider  hetero- 
geneous, and  even  discordant. 

Permit  me  then  to  put  the  matter 
thus : 

1. — The  book  to  be  manufactured  in 
the  country  granting  Copyright,  by  a 
subject  or  citizen. 

:.'. — This  to  be  done  (and  I  conclude  the 
book  published)  within  three  months,  etc. 

No.  1.— Let.  us  examine  precisely  the 
grievance  this  treaty  proposes  to  al- 
ios iate. 

An  author's  work  which,  when  worth 
pirating,  is  the  fruit  of  great  labor, 
consists  of  an  essential  substance  and  a 
vehicle. 

The  substance  is  the  composition;  the 
vehicle  is  generally  paper  and  words 
written  with  ink. 

That  the  composition  is  the  substance 
— though  puny  lawyers  and  petty  states- 
men cannot  see  it— is  shown  by  this,  it 
can  be  sold  viva,  voce  apart  from  paper 
and  written  or  printed  words:  dramatic 
compositions  are  so  sold,  and  the  first 
Epie  poem  was  so  delivered  to  the  public 
for  centuries,  and  the  Chronicles  of  Frois- 
sart  were  sold  viva,  voce  by  the  author, 
and  to  his  great  profit,  and  no  copies 
made  till  he  died  ;  and  the  public  used 
to  pay  Dickens  a  much  higher  price  for 
his  spoken  compositions,  than  for  the 
same  compositions  papered,  printed,  and 
bound. 


READIAXA. 


325 


A  printed  book,  or  play,  is  only  the 
manuscript  multiplied  ;  the  composition 
remains  the  substance  ;  the  paper,  print, 
and  binding-,  are  still  a  mere  vehicle, 
and  not  the  only  one ;  the  Theater  sells 
the  same  composition  with  cpiite  a  differ- 
ent vehicle. 

Now  the  grievance  of  authors  against 
nations  cultivating  piracy  is  this — they 
rob  the  foreign  workman,  who  produces 
the  substance,  of  a  book  or  play,  yet 
remunerate  all  the  workmen,  whether 
native  or  foreign,  who  produce  the 
mere  vehicle.  The  injury  is  leveled  at 
the  foreign  author  qua  author,  and  not 
qua  foreigner. 

Let  a  foreign  author  cross  the  water 
with  a  play  and  a  book.  Let  him  go 
into  a  theater  and  a  printing-house; 
let  him  play  one  of  those  many  charac- 
ters he  has  created  in  his  drama,  and 
print  fifty  pages  of  his  own  composition, 
he  can  extort  remuneration — although 
he  is  a  foreigner — for  both  vehicles ;  but 
lie  can  enforce  none  for  the  far  more 
valuable  substance  he  has  created  with 
infinitely  greater,  higher,  and  longer 
labor.  Here  then  is  an  exceptional  fraud 
leveled  at  exceptional  merit,  and  one 
producing  laborer  picked  out  of  a  dozen 
for  pillage,  though  what  he  produces 
contributes  more  to  the  aggregate  value 
than  the  labor  of  all  the  other  workmen 
concerned. 

This  iniquity  may  pay  a  handful  of 
booksellers,  or  theatrical  managers,  in 
a  nation  cultivating  Piracy,  but  it  mas- 
sacres the  authors  of  that  nation  by  the 
competition  of  stolen  compositions,  and 
it  robs  the  nation  of  the  habit  of  lit- 
erary and  dramatic  invention,  which  is 
a  greater  national  treasure  than  any 
amount  of  stolen  compositions,  since  the 
nation,  which  harbors  pirates,  has  to 
pay  the  full  price  for  the  vehicles,  and 
does  not  get  the  substance  or  composi- 
tion for  nothing,  any  the  more  because 
its  booksellers  and  theatrical  managers 
do.  Indeed,  as  to  the  latter,  the  prices 
are  never  lowered  to  the  native  public 
one  cent,  in  those  cases  where  the  man- 
ager steals  the  drama  from  a  foreign 
author. 


Now  proposition  1,  taken  singly,  en- 
tirely cures  the  above  grievance,  so  far 
as  printed  books  are  concerned. 

Authors  have  a  moral  right  to  be  paid 
for  their  compositions,  in  every  nation 
where  the  vehicle  is  paid  for  and  the 
combination  sold,  not  given  away;  but 
they  have  no  moral  claim,  that  I  am. 
aware  of,  to  create  and  sell  the  vehicle 
in  a  distant  land,  and  if  they  have  no 
such  right,  still  less  can  their  native 
publishers — mere  occasional  assignees  of 
copyright— pretend  to  acquire  a  right 
from  authors,  which  authors  themselves 
do  not  claim. 

The  United  States  are  a  protectionist 
nation,  and  it  would  be  egotistical  and 
childish  of  English  authors  to  expect 
that  nation  to  depart  from  its  universal 
policy,  and  to  make  an  exception  in  favor 
of  authors,  and  their  mere  occasional  as- 
signees; our  cry  is  "no  partiality!" 
To  ask  you  to  deviate  from  your  univer- 
sal policy  would  be  to  ask  for  "  some 
partiality." 

Proposition  2.  This  rests  on  no  basis 
of  universal  equity  or  of  uniform  national 
policy.  It  does  not  come  from  the  mind 
of  any  American  lawyer  or  statesman. 
It  is  one  of  those  subtle  suggestions  of 
Piracy,  with  which  all  copyright  acts  are 
marred.  Copyrights  are  neither  meal 
nor  meat,  and  therefore,  like  other  prod- 
ucts of  high  civilization,  they  cannot  ob- 
tain their  just  value  on  a  forced  sale. 
But  three  months  to  transact  the  sale 
of  the  composition  and  also  create  the 
vehicle  is  a  very  forced  sale. 

Habits  are  strong,  and  this  proviso 
would  encourage  the  bad  habit  the  treaty 
professes  to  cure,  instead  of  stimulating 
a  good  one.  It  would  turn  all  the  pub- 
lishers, on  both  sides  the  water,  into  Lot's 
wives,  hankering  after  dear  old  Piracy, 
and  longing  to  put  the  clock  on  three 
months.  By  hanging  back  during  that 
short  period  they  might  drive  even  popu- 
lar authors  into  a  corner.  But  the  pro- 
viso would  do  a  much  worse  thing  than 
that — the  rising  American  author,  who 
is  literally  withering  under  the  present 
system,  and  who  is  the  victim  that  needs 
loyal  and  earnest  protection,   far   more 


326 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


than  any  British  author  does— would  be 
juggled,  under  this  proviso.  For  some 
years  he  must  necessarily  come  into  our 
market  at  a  certain  disadvantage  inde- 
pendent of  law.  British  publishers  would 
either  offer  him  one-tenth  of  his  value  or 
demand  time  to  see  how  his  book  sold  in 
the  United  States :  and  then,  having 
gained  time,  would  use  this  proviso, 
steal  his  composition,  if  it  proved  a  suc- 
cess, or  chuck  him  a  bone  instead  of  his 
just  slice. 

But  these  comments,  you  will  under- 
stand, are  leveled  at  the  nude  proviso  as 
you  have  presented  it  to  me. 

If  your  government  has  foreseen  that 
it  is  certain  to  be  abused,  and  to  render 
the  whole  treaty  more  or  less  illusory, 
ami  therefore  intends  to  control  it  by 
sonic  other  clause,  that  is  another  mat- 
ter. 

If  not,  and  the  proviso  has  been  incau- 
tiously inserted  witli  the  reasonable  desire 
to  protect  the  public  against  a  foreign 
author's  refusal  to  sell  his  copyright  al 
all,  or  on  reasonable  terms,  the  whole 
case  could  be  met  by  an  additional  clause 
giving  the  foreign  author  or  proprietor 
the  righl  to  apply  to  the  Judges  in  Banco 
for  an  extension  of  the  term,  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  offered  the  copy- 
right, or  a  share  in  it,  or  the  use  of  it. 
but,  had  been  unable  to  obtain  terms  cor- 
responding in  any  degree  with  his  market 
value  at  home.  The  judges  to  have  the 
right  to  receive  written  evidence,  less 
strict  than  a  jury  would  require,  and  to 
extend  the  term  or  authorize  the  foreign 
proprietor  to  publish  through  a  native 
agent,  or  afford  some  other  relief,  under 
the  vital  conditions  of  the  treaty. 

Having  gone  deeper  into  the  matter 
than  I  intended,  I  may  as  well  volunteer 
a  remark  or  two  outside  your  queries, 
which  ma3r  be  of  service  to  the  American 
legislator,  if  he  will  receive  it  from   me. 

There  are  two  great  literary  properties 
of  nearly  equal  value  and  importance. 

1.  A  man's  exclusive  right  to  print  and 
publish  the  composition  he  has  created, 
whether  history,  romance,  treatise,  or 
drama,  etc. 

2.  His  exclusive  right  to  represent  on 


a  public  stage  the  dramatic  composition 
he  has  created. 

No.  1  is  called  Copyright,  No.  2  is 
called  Stage-right.  But,  unfortunately, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  muddlehead  has  hither- 
to avoided  the  accurate  term,  stage-right, 
and  applied,  in  the  teeth  of  sense,  gram- 
mar, and  logic,  the  imbecile  phrase, 
••dramatic  copyright,''  to  No.  2.  But 
the  phrase,  "dramatic  copyright."  means 
the  sole  right  of  printing  and  publishing 
a  play-book,  or  it  means  nothing  at  all. 
It  cannot  mean,  nor  be  made  to  mean,  the 
right  of  representing  a  play.  Now  men 
are  the  slaves  of  words  ;  and  so  our  law- 
givers and  yours,  having  the  word  "copy- 
right "  dinned  eternally  into  their  ears, 
and  never  hearing  the  word  "stage- 
right,"  are  at  this  moment  in  a  fool's 
paradise.  They  imagine  copyrighl  to  be 
an  all  important  right  and  stage-right 
an  insignificant  affair. 

Pure  chimera  !  stage-right  is  at  least 
as  important  as  copyright,  and  inter- 
national morality  and  sound  policy  de- 
mand international  stage-right  as  much 
as  they  do  international  copyright. 

Our  two  nations  invest  their  money  on 
the  following  scale. 

1.  A  vast  sum  daily  in  newspapers,  of 
which  the  title  is  copyright;  but  not  the 
contents.  These  protect  themselves  from 
fatal  piracy  ;  they  die  a  natural  death 
every  afternoon,  and  so  escape  assassina- 
tion next  morning. 

2.  A  small  sum,  daily,  in  books. 

3.  A  large  sum,  daily,  in  represented 
plays— one  hundred  thousand  pounds 
sterling  per  day  at  the  very  least. 

As  regards  2  and  3.  you  will  find  the 
comparative  scale  indicated  in  the  news- 
papers themselves  ;  these,  with  unerring 
instinct,  discover  the  habits  of  their 
nation.  Take  them  through  the  breadth 
of  the  land,  you  will  find  they  review  a 
book  now  and  then,  but  they  are  eternally 
puffing  plays,  and  at  great  length. 

Now  by  piracj-  cf  stage-right  from  for- 
eigners, a  nation  loses  its  chance  of  that 
great  treasure,  a  national  drama,  and 
does  not  get  one  cent  per  annum  in  ex- 
change for  that  serious  deprivation.  The 
piratical  publisher    pretends  he  sells    a 


READIANA. 


S27 


book  cheaper  for  stealing  the  composition. 
It  is  not  true  ;  for,  if  he  bought  the  com- 
position under  a  copyright  act,  he  would 
sell  all  the  copies  instead  of  sharing  the 
sale  with  other  pirates  ;  and  so  could  sell 
cheaper  than  in  the  way  of  Piracy  :  but, 
if  not  true,  it  is  plausible,  and  has  de- 
ceived shallow  statesmen  by  the  score. 

But  the  piratical  manager  of  a  theater 
does  not  even  pretend  to  lower  his  prices 
to  the  public  in  those  cases,  when  he 
steals  the  composition. 

There  are,  besides  all  this,  two  special 
reasons  why  you  should  propose  inter- 
national stage-right  to  the  British  Gov- 
ernment, along  with  international  copy- 
right, and  not  as  an  afterclap,  which  you 
will  have  to  do  if  you  will  not  listen  to 
Cassandra,  better  known  in  Knights- 
bridge  as  Charles  Reade.  One  is,  that 
the  people  most  likely  to  give  you  trouble 
in  this  country,  over  international  copy- 
right, are  the  British  publishers.  Habit- 
ual creators  of  the  vehicle  and  not  of  the 
composition  and  the  copyright,  they  will 
naturally  think  it  very  hard  they  are  not 
to  be  allowed  to  create  the  vehicle  in  the 
United  States. 

Their  opposition  might  be  serious  ;  be- 
cause, for  some  generations,  they  have 
been  allowed  to  thrust  themselves  for- 
ward and  put  the  authors  unreasonably 
in  the  background. 

To  discuss  with  our  Government  the 
two  great  properties  authors  create,  viz., 
stage-right  and  copyright,  would  tend  to 
open  John  Bull's  eyes  and  show  him 
which  is  really  the  leading  character  in 
literary  property,  the  authors,  who  cre- 
ate all  the  stage-rights  and  all  the  copy- 
rights, or  the  publishers,  who  acquire  by 
assignment  about  one-third  of  the  copy- 
rights only,  and  none  of  the  stage- 
rights. 

The  second  reason  is  that  at  present 
the  American  dramatic  author  suffers  a 
special  iniquity,  by  Act  of  Parliament, 
deteriorating  the  common  law  of  En- 
gland. 

If  a  British  author  writes  a  drama, 
represents  it  on  the  stage  in  Great  Brit- 
ain, but  does  not  publish  it.  and  then  ex- 
ports it  to  the  United  States,  he  possesses 


the  sole  right  of  representation  in  the 
United  States,  or,  at  all  events,  in  the 
principal  States.  This  has  been  decided 
by  your  judges  after  full  and  repeated 
discussion. 

The  American  dramatist,  until  1842, 
possessed  the  same  right  under  the  law 
of  England  ;  and  accordingly  Macklin  v. 
Richardson,  which  is  the  English  case 
that  protects  all  unpublished  dramas 
under  the  common  law,  was  lately  cited 
with  authority  in  the  tribunals  of  the 
United  States  on  the  occasion  1  have  re- 
ferred to. 

But  our  copyright  act  of  1842  poked  its 
nose  into  stage-right,  with  which  it  had 
nothing  on  earth  to  do,  and  inserted  an 
unjust,  oppressive  and  unreasonable 
clause,  outlawing  from  stage-right  all 
dramas  not  first  represented  in  Great 
Britain.  The  framers  of  this,  and  a  simi- 
lar clause  in  the  body  of  the  act,  mistook 
the  root  of  an  author's  title.  The  poor 
souls  imagined  it  accrues  by  publication 
or  representation  under  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, whereas  it  accrues  earlier  in  time, 
and  by  an  older  and  much  higher  title, 
viz.,  creation,  and  under  the  common 
law. 

Test. — Let  A  write  a  MS.  and  lend  it  to 
B.  B  print  and  publish  it,  and  register 
it  at  Stationers'  Hall,  and  hand  the  MS. 
back,  uninjured,  without  a  scratch  on  it, 
to  A.  A  would  sue  B  for  breach  of  copy- 
right, under  the  common  law,  and  B's 
parliamentary  title,  by  publication  and 
registration,  would  prove  not  worth  a 
rush  against  the  precedent  title  by  crea- 
tion and  common  law. 

The  American  dramatist,  therefore,  is 
by  the  above  clause  in  an  Act  that  had  no 
need  to  run,  like  a  frolicsome  colt,  out  of 
copyright  into  stage-right,  and  so  extend 
the  field  of  its  blunders,  subjected  to  a 
special  iniquity. 

In  copyright  there  is,  at  present,  a  sort 
of  equity  of  fraud.  Rob  my  authors,  and 
I  will  rob  your  authors.  But  in  stage- 
right  it  is  pure  iniquity,  and  the  Ameri- 
can dramatist  the  victim. 

These  are  the  principal  reasons  why  I 
venture  to  advise  you  not  to  exclude  in- 
ternational stage-right  from  your  discus- 


328 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


sion  of  international  copyright  with  the 
British  Government. 

I  must  now  apologize  for  my  presump- 
tion— which,  however,  arises  from  good- 
will— and  for  the  crude  and  hasty  charac- 
ter of  these  comments.  But  I  present 
them  to  one  who  is  well  able  to  sift  the 
chaff  from  the  grain,  and  so  make  the 
best  of  them.     I  am, 

My  dear  Mr.  Lowell, 

Yours  very  sincerely  . 

Charles  Reads. 


VICARIA. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — There  is  a  little  stroke  of  business 
going  to  be  done  next  Friday  iff  the  little 
town  of  Uxbridge,  againsl  which  I  beg  to 
record  a  little  pro!  est .  It  is  a  public  auc- 
tion of  a  very  small  personalty  professed- 
ly for  the  benefit  of  the  Crown  ;  bul  I  ap- 
prehend the  proceeds  will  go  to  another 
brand)  of  the  revenue.  Tins  sale  and  the 
threatened  appropriation  of  certain  money 
which  was  regarded  by  the  deceased 
holder  as  trust-money,  arose  oul  of  the 
foillowitiLr  circumstances:  The  Rev.  \V. 
Orr,  a  Nonconformist  minister,  wrote. 
with  his  own  hand.  August  G.  1881,  a  will. 
containing  a  just  and  proper  disposition 
of  his  small  property.  He  bequeathed 
£50  to  New  College,  Hampstead  :  £50  in 
three  sums  to  three  poor  Christian  women 
who  had  been  his  housekeepers  at  differ- 
ent periods  :  a  few  of  his  choicest  books 
to  clerical  friends;  his  gold  watch  and 
chain  to  a  Miss  Ellen  Orr  ;  and  the  bal- 
ance, after  payment  of  expenses,  to  a  Mrs. 
W.  Orr.  But  as  to  a  sum  of  £300  lie  did 
not  bequeath  it,  but  directed  it  to  be  re- 
turned to  Miss  Sarah  Peters;  and  heap- 
pointed  a  Mr.  Harris  his  executor.  Mr. 
Orr  showed  this  will  at  various  times  to 
several  persons  who  knew  his  handwrit- 
ing;  and    its    contents    became    public. 


They  even  reached  the  three  poor  house- 
keepers ;  and  that  is  a  sad  feature  of  the 
case  at  present.  A  few  days  before  Mr. 
Orr  died,  a  dear  friend  of  his  learned  that 
his  will  was  not  attested,  and  advised  him 
to  repair  that  omission.  Mr.  Orr  assented, 
bul  death  surprised  him  before  he  could 
execute  his  declared  purpose.  He  died 
February  ?,  1882,  deeply  mourned  by  his 
own  flock  and  revered  by  all  good  Chris- 
tians in  the  town  of  Uxbridge. 

lie  had  no  relations  in  law.  His  will 
was  attested,  in  fact,  by  half  a  dozen 
witnesses,  but  not,  in  law,  "by  two," 
and  therefore  his  property  lay  at  the 
mercy  of  what  cuckoos  still  call  "the 
Crown."  but  accuracy — if  such  a  bird  of 
paradise  existed  in  England — would  call 
"  the  Revenue." 

However,  high-minded  men,  acting  in 
the  name  of  the  Crown,  have  of  late  been 
\ci\  shy  of  confiscating  even  in  cases  of 
felony,  and  as  Mr.  Orr  was  not  a  felon, 
but  only  a  saint  and  an  Irishman,  and 
therefore  could  not,  ex  vi  terminorum, 
be  a  man  of  business,  we  Imped  that  the 
lords  of  the  treasury  would  respect  his 
solemn  wishes,  since  they  are  as  clear, 
and  clearer,  than  if  the  will  had  been 
drawn  by  a  lawyer's  clerk  and  signed  by 
t  wo  witnesses. 

Accordingly  the  matter  went  before 
the  lords  of  the  treasury  in  two  forms. 

1.  Sarah  Peters  petitioned  for  the  re- 
turn of  her  £300,  as  above. 

2.  Me.  Harris,  executor,  offered  to  act 
and  discharge  all  the  debts,  expenses, 
and  legacies,  if  the  lords  of  the  treas- 
ury would  forego  their  claim. 

Miss  Peters  tells  me  she  has  received 
no  reply. 

Mr.  Harris  has  heard  only  from  the  so- 
licitor of  the  treasur3r,  ordering  an  im- 
mediate sale  of  the  property — with  one 
exception.  His  vicarious  majesty,  the  so- 
licitor for  the  treasury,  accords  to  the 
executor  the  right  to  withhold  the  choice 
books,  but  not  the  right  to  withhold  the 
gold  watch  and  chain,  which  were  as 
solemnly  bequeathed  to  a  person  speci- 
fied as  the  books  were.  Now,  I  did  not 
expect  this  imperial  edict  and  high- 
minded,   though   illogical,  distinction  to 


READIANA. 


329 


be  signed  by  the  chief  of  that  bureau,  for 
he  has  valued  books  far  more  than  gold 
from  his  youth  up  until  now.  But.,  by 
what  I  can  learn,  the  edict  is  not  signed 
by  any  lord  of  the  treasury  whatever.  It 
is  clear  on  the  face  of  things  that  neither 
the  petition  of  Miss  Peters  nor  the  pro- 
posal of  Mr.  Harris  has  been  laid  before 
the  lords  of  the  treasury,  nor  considered 
by  responsible  men.  Yet  prompt  action 
is  taken  at  once  by  vicarious  rapacity. 
There  is  no  vice  in  any  of  the  individuals 
concerned  ;  it  is  merely  a  vicious  s\-stem. 
The  solicitor  of  the  treasury  would  not 
pounce  upon  this  property  for  his  per- 
sonal benefit  ;  the  lords  of  the  treasury 
will  bring  their  understandings  and  their 
consciences  to  bear  on  the  matter — after 
a  few  months  or  years ;  and  will  probably 
decide  in  favor,  not  of  English  law,  but 
of  Continental  law  and  universal  morality, 
both  of  which  support  this  deceased  clergy- 
man's will  written  by  his  own  hand  and 
shown  to  his  friends.  But,  meantime, 
this  harsh  auction,  ordered  with  incon- 
venient and  indecorous'  haste,  over  a  new- 
made  grave  —  this  present  activity  of 
vicarious  greed  and  dead  silence  as  to 
equity  to  come — have  shocked  and  re- 
volted a  thousand  mourners,  and  cruelly 
disappointed  the  humbler  legatees  as 
well  as  excited  some  public  odium.  I  do 
not  wish  to  inflame  their  feelings,  but 
to  suggest  their  removal.  Therefore,  as 
my  views  are  always  unintelligible  to 
the  clerks  and  secretaries,  the  duffers, 
the  buffers,  and  the  agents,  of  a  public 
office,  and  I  can  no  more  get  a  manu- 
script past  that  incarnate  rampart  of 
'' vicaria  "  than  Miss  Peters  or  Mr.  Har- 
ris can,  will  you  kindly  allow  me  to  ap- 
proach the  magnates  of  the  treasury  by 
the  only  direct  road  I  know— viz.,  the 
columns  of  a  great  public  journal  ?  I 
think,  my  lords,  it  would  be  well  to  let 
the  people  know  without  delay  that  you 
intend  personally  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion whether  or  not,  under  the  peculiar 
circumstances,  any  portion  of  this  de- 
ceased clergyman's  estate,  except  the 
amount  of  legacy  duty,  shall  be  finally 
appropriated  by  the  State ;  and  as  re- 
gards the  gold  watch   and   chain,   it  is 


not  too  late  to  withdraw  them  from  the 
coming  sale ;  and  I  hope  you  will  con- 
cede this  favor,  because,  if  they  are 
thrown  into  the  melting-pot  of  the 
treasury  next  Friday,  for  not  being-  hex- 
aglot  Bibles,  it  may  be  difficult,  even 
should  Dr.  Stevenson  vouchsafe  his  aid, 
to  reintegrate  and  reconstruct  the  com- 
ponent parts  so  as  to  recover  their  value 
to  the  legatee.  To  her  they  are  not  so 
many  ounces  of  jeweler's  gold,  but  the 
souvenir  of  one  who  never  wasted  time, 
yet  lived  for  eternity. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 

March  16,  1883. 


HANG     IN    HASTE,    REPENT    AT 
LEISURE: 

A    SUPPRESSED    INDICTMENT. 


FIRST     LETTER. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Daily  Telegraph." 

September  29f/t,  1877. 

Sir — I  read  with  surprise  and  deep  con- 
cern these  lines  in  the  Daily  Telegraph, 
Sept.  27  : 

"  The  jury  asked  the  learned  judge  if 
they  could  have  a  copy  of  the  indictment. 

"Mr.  Justice  Hawkins  said,  'It  would 
not  help  them  in  the  least,  written  as  it 
was  in  legal  phraseology.'  " 

Now,  if  the  judge  had  said,  "  Of  course, 
gentlemen,  you  have  as  much  right  to 
examine  the  indictment  as  I  have;  but  I 
warn  you  it  is  written  in  a  jargon  you  are 
not  intended  to  understand,  but  only  to 
pronounce  on,  and  so  hang  your  fellow- 
creatures,"  there  would  have  been  no 
harm  done,  and  fa  wholesome  reprimand 
administered  to  the  pedantic  clique  which 
words  these  public  and  terrible  accusa- 
tions in  jargon  and  equivoques. 

But  I  infer  from  your  printed  lines  that 


330 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READS. 


the  jury  asked  for  a  copy  of  the  indict- 
ment to  compare  with  the  condensed  evi- 
dence, and  did  not  get  one. 

If  so,  the  thing-  is  monstrous,  and 
vitiates  the  proceedings,  creditable  as 
they  were  in  many  respects.  Consider, 
sir,  the  Crown  is  not  above  the  law.  The 
Crown,  in  a  prosecution  of  this  sort, 
comes  before  the  jury,  who  are  the 
country,  in  the  general  character  of  plaint- 
iff and  proceeds  by  indictment.  That 
indictment  is  the  grave  and  deliberate 
accusation  which  the  Crown,  to  guard 
against  the  errors  and  defects  of  the 
tongue,  submits  in  writing  to  the  judge 
and  the  jury.  It  is  a  legal  document 
which  the  judge  is  bound  to  criticise 
severely,  on  grounds  of  law.  It  is  an 
allegation  of  facts  and  motives  the  jury 
is  equally  bound  to  dissect  severely,  and 
compare  it  in  every  particular  with  the 
evidence.  Then,  if  there  is  a  legal  defect 
in  it  no  bigger  than  a  pin's  head,  the 
judge  can  upset  the  case  in  spite  of  its 
merits;  and  by  the  same  rule — whatever 
the  egotism  of  the  legal  clique  may  think 
— if  it  vary  from  the  truth  in  its  allega- 
tions of  fact  or  of  motives,  which  latter 
are  the  vital  part  of  an  indictment,  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  jury  to  throw  it  over, 
or  in  certain  eases  to  reduce  the  verdict. 
And  it  does  so  happen  that  in 
alleged  homicide  the  indictment  oughl 
always  to  be  dissected  without  mercy  by 
the  jury,  for  here,  where  the  Crown  ought 
to  be  most  accurate,  it  is  most  apt  to  ex- 
aggerate. The  truth  is,  that  many  years 
ago  the  legal  advisers  of  the  Crown 
thirsted  for  the  blood  of  accused  persons, 
and  framed  indictments  accordingly  :  and 
such  is  the  force  of  precedent  that  even 
now  the  Crown  (or  some  attorney's  clerk 
we  are  content  to  call  by  that  name)  is 
somewhat  given  to  equivocating,  exag- 
gerating, and  alleging  more  than  can  be 
proved,  especially  in  the  way  of  motives, 
which  are  the  true  sting  of  an  indict- 
ment. 

Whatever  bad  and  unreasonable  custom 
the  legal  clique,  in  dealing  with  the 
nation,  may  have  introduced  into  our 
courts,  it  is  clearly  the  duty  of  the  Crown 
solicitor  to  lay  before  the  jury,  who  ai*e 


the  country,  not  the  copj',  but  twelve 
copies,  of  the  indictment,  before  the 
prosecuting  counsel  opens  his  lips.  The 
judge  has  no  better,  no  other,  title  to  a 
copy  of  the  indictment  than  each  several 
juryman  has.  As  to  the  jargon  of  indict- 
ments, I  have  not  found  it  so  thick  but 
that  a  plain  man  can  pick  out  of  the  rig- 
marole the  facts  and  motives  whereof 
what  we  call  the  "  Crown  "  accuses  the 
prisoner.  If  it  were,  the  matter  should 
be  looked  into  at  once.  All  cliques,  how- 
ever respectable,  are  public  enemies  at 
odd  times.  Many  years  ago  the  country 
had  to  compel  1  he  clergy  to  read  prayers 
•'  in  a  language  understanded  of  the 
people."  Country  v.  Clique.  Next  we 
had  to  compel  a  clique  to  give  us  the 
laws  of  England  in  English.  Country  v. 
Clique.  By  and  by  we  had  to  force  a 
clique  to  drop  the  grossest  compost  of 
bad  Latin  and  bad  French  nation  ever 
groaned  under,  and  to  give  us  our  law 
pleadings  in  English.  Country  v.  Clique. 
And  now,  if  it  is  seriously  asserted  that 
the  Crown  attacks  the  lives  and  liberties 
of  Britons  in  a  language  not  understanded 
of  the  country,  though  the  country  has 
to  judge  both  Crown  and  prisoner,  it  is 
time  we  copied  ancestral  wisdom,  and 
put  our  foot  on  imbecility  No.  4.  Country 
v.  Clique. 

These,  however,  are  after-considera- 
tions; at  present  I  stand  upon  clear  con- 
stitutional rights. 

I  understand  the  country  demanded  in 
open  court  a  copy  of  that  indictment,  and 
did  not  get  one. 

I  repeat  that  demand  in  your  columns, 
in  order  that  the  country  may  see  it,  jar- 
gon, or  no  jargon,  and  compare  it  with 
the  evidence  in  your  columns.  Of  course 
I  do  not  address  my  demand  to  any 
gentleman  in  particular.  There  are  sev- 
eral copies  in  existence.  No  doubt  some 
just  man  will  awake  from  his  slumbers 
and  send  you  a  copy.  I  earnestly  hope  to 
see  it  printed  in  extenso.  Till  then  I  for- 
bear all  comments  on  the  case,  because 
the  issues  are  not  before  me,  any  more 
than  they  were  before  the  country  at  the 
trial.  Your  faithful  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 


READIANA. 


331 


SECOND  LETTER. 

October  2d,  1877. 

Sir — It  is  an  old  saying-  that  one  fool 
makes  many.  I  have,  however,  discov- 
ered something-  more — viz.,  that  one  mud- 
dlehead  sometimes  makes  a  million,  if  he 
can  get  a  popular  journal  to  print  him.  I 
must  take  the  world  as  it  is ;  and  in  so 
grave  and  terrible  a  case,  I  dare  not  let 
your  correspondent  "A.  B."  pass  unan- 
swered. 

He  is  a  lawyer,  and  does  not  pretend  to 
deny  that  the  jury  have  as  good  a  right 
to  a  copy  of  the  indictment  as  the  judge 
has.  But  he  says  that  in  a  large  ex- 
perience of  criminal  trials,  he  never  knew 
a  judge  to  hand  a  copy  of  the  indictment 
to  the  jury.  He  adds,  in  the  roundabout 
style  of  men  who  do  not  think  clearly, 
what  really  comes  to  this,  that  as  the 
judge  talked  a  great  deal  and  well,  it  did 
not  matter  to  the  jury  what  the  Crown 
wrote. 

Now,  sir,  this  is  no  answer  to  me.  I 
never  said  the  judge  was  bound  to  volun- 
teer a  copy  of  the  indictment  to  the  jury; 
I  never  denied  the  malpractice  of  the 
courts,  and  that  the  Crown  solicitor  does 
not  hand  twelve  copies  to  the  jury,  though 
it  is  his  duty.  I  have  never  denied  that 
twelve  unguarded  jurymen,  new  to  the 
courts,  often  let  the  legal  clique  trepan 
them  into  trying  a  case  without  studying 
the  written  issues.  But  ignorant  persons 
can  only  forego  their  own  rights.  Their 
ignorance  does  not  forfeit  the  rights  of 
the  informed.  What  we  have  to  do  with 
is  a  jury  which  acted  on  their  rights  and 
their  duty.  They  were  just  enough,  wise 
enough,  and  wary  enough,  to  demand,  at 
a  critical  period  of  the  trial,  a  copy  of  the 
very  words  of  the  Crown  upon  which,  and 
not  upon  the  judge's  words,  they  had  to 
say,  "Guilty  or  not  Guilty."  The  judge 
put  off  this  their  just  and  proper  demand, 
and  gave  a  reason  which,  weighed  against 
the  wise  and  proper  reasons  of  the  jury 
and  against  their  constitutional  right, 
sounds  almost  like  mere  levity.  By  so 
doing,  he  left  them  to  give  their  verdict 
on  his  own  spoken  words  alone,  and  not 
on  the  written  words  of  his  Sovereign  and 


theirs.  This  is  the  case.  I  think  it  is  with- 
out precedent  and  vitiates  the  proceedings. 
If  there  is  a  precedent,  however,  it  will  be 
found  and  quoted.  But  the  country  will  ex- 
pect it  to  be  a  precedent  that  fits  the  case, 
without  shuffling  or  equivocation,  and 
meantime  I  hope  the  execution  will  not 
be  hurried,  but  time  given  for  the  country 
and  the  Home  Secretary  to  consider  this 
fatal  blot  on  the  proceedings.  Indeed, 
the  matter  ought  to  be  noticed  in  Parlia- 
ment, especially  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. 

•  I  am,  sir,  3-our  faithful  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 


THIRD  LETTER. 

October  3d,  1877. 

Sir — Mr.  Abbott  says  the  author  of 
"  It  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend  "  is  soft- 
hearted. Not  a  bit  of  it.  He  is  only 
harder-headed  than  certain  Englishmen. 
He  proved  in  the  story  cited  above  that 
the  honest  man  who  kills  a  thief  in  prison 
contra ry  to  law  is  a  greater  criminal  than 
the  thief.  That  was  logic  ;  not  compas- 
sion. Mr.  Abbott  now  reminds  us  that 
pettifogging  judges,  looking  too  closely 
into  indictments,  have  quashed  them  on 
trumpery  grounds  of  law,  in  spite  of  evi- 
dence. That  is  notorious.  But  what  is 
the  inference  ?  are  the  judges  not  to  be 
allowed  a  copy  of  the  indictment?  He 
has  proved  that,  or  he  has  proved  noth- 
ing;  for  no  jury  ever  defeated  justice 
with  a  quibble  on  the  indictment.  In 
spite  of  these  occasional  abuses,  constitu- 
tional rights  must  not  be  tampered  with. 
A  judge  is  as  much  entitled  to  a  copy  of 
the  indictment  as  even  the  jury  are,  who 
have  to  try  the  issues.  What  we  have  to 
do  with  is  a  new  thing — the  separate  in- 
dictments of  four  persons,  submitted  to 
the  judge,  but  not  seen  by  the  jury, 
though  they  asked  for  them,  and  the  jury 
delivering  a  sort  of  lump  verdict  on  un- 
seen indictments,  in  which,  perhaps,  the 
Crown  did  not  lump  four  very  different 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


cases  in  one  without  any  discriminating 
words  whatever.  Who  knows  ?  The  in- 
dictments are  still  suppressed.  Another 
of  your  correspondents  draws  nie  out  by 
malicious  misinterpretation.  He  puts 
violent  and  cruel  words  into  my  mouth, 
and  is  l-eckless  enough,  with  my  sober 
lines  before  him,  to  pretend  that  I  com- 
pare Mr.  Justice  Hawkins  to  Judge  Jef- 
fryes.  Of  course  such  unscrupulous  peo- 
ple ran  compel  a  man  to  notice  them. 
The  learned  judge  has  been  my  counsel, 
and  I  have  profited  by  his  abilities.  I  was 
never  so  unfortunate  as  to  have  him 
against  me,  in  court.  I  hope  T  never 
shall.  The  jury  asked  by  word  of  mouth 
for  the  indictment.  He  replied,  without 
much  reflection,  by  word  of  mouth.  His 
reply  was  unfortunate,  as  many  a  hasty 
reply  of  my  own  has  been.  and.  as  its  ef- 
fect was  to  deprive  the  jury  of  their  con- 
stitutional rights,  1  think  it  vitiates  the 
proceedings.  As  to  the  merits  of  the 
case,  is  it  fair  of  any  man  to  tell  the  pub- 
lic whal  I  think  when  I  myself  have  been 
so  careful  not  to  rush  hastily  into  thai 
question?  As  it  happens,  I  approve  some 
things  in  the  learned  judge's  summing-up 
in  spite  of  the  objection  taken  to  those 
particulars  by  others.  It  is  only  in  one 
part  of  the  subjecl  1  do  not  at  presenl 
agree  with  him.  Even  then,  I  desire  to 
think  well  before  I  write,  for  no  man  feels 
more  than  I  do  the  responsibility  to  God 
and  man  of  every  one  who  uses  the  vast 
power  of  a  popular  journal  in  a  case  of 
life  and  death. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 


FOURTH  LETTER. 

October  10(h.  1877. 
Sm— When  a  woman  of  property  is  half- 
starved  by  people  who  are  eating  her 
bread,  and  her  husband,  with  his  para- 
mour, lives  but  one  mile  distant,  on  the 
money  of  their  injured  benefactress,  and 
the  victim  dies  covered  with  vermin  and 


weighing  about  five  stone,  the  wildfire  of 
indignation  will,  I  hope,  always  run 
through  everj'  vein  of  the  country,  and 
the  judges  share  the  just  wrath  of  the 
gentry  and  of  the  millions  who  work  so 
hard  to  feed  their  own  helpless  charges. 

But  great  wrath,  even  when  just,  is 
sti',1  a  fever  of  the  mind,  and  cannot  dis-  J 
criminate.  While  the  heart  is  still  hot 
with  that  fire  which  has  been  so  truly 
called  "a  passing  frenzy"  {ira  brevis 
furor),  the  culpable  ones  seem  criminal. 
the  criminal  ones  seem  monsters,  and 
"our  great  revenge  has  stomach  for  ^ 
them  all." 

I.  who  write  these  lines,  am  but  a  man 
recovering  fast  from  a  fever  in  a  nation 
which  is  recovering  slowly  but  surely.  I 
recover  fast,  because,  from  my  youth.  I 
have  been  trained  in  a  great  school  to 
reason  closely  and  discriminate  keenly, 
and  armed  with  Oxford  steel  against  the  — 
tricks  and  sophistries  of  rhetoric,  against 
the  derangement  of  dates  (which  single 
artifice  will  turn  true  facts  into  lies), 
against  those  fatal  traps,  equivoques  in 
language,  and  against-  all  gaps  in  evi- 
dence, however  small  they  may  appear  to 
the  unwary.  I  grieve  to  say  thai  I  re- 
ceive shoals  of  insulting  letters,  telling 
me  I  am  a  Whalleyite  and  a  novelist,  and 
so  disqualified.  This  draws  a  few  unwill- 
i!  g  words  from  me  to  disarm  prejudice. 
1  declared  against  Orton  in  the  Daily 
Xnr.s  be.',. re  ever  the  Crown  tried  him. 
I  then  laid  down  the  scientific  principle 
which  governs  his  case,  the  doctrine  of 
multiplied  coincidences;  and,  though  I 
write  novels  at  one  time,  I  can  write  logic 
at  another,  and  when  I  write  a  novel  1 
give  the  public  my  lowest  gifts,  but  I 
give  them  my  highest  when  I  write  in  a 
great  journal  upon  life  and  death  and 
justice.  But  the  best  thing  the  public, 
and  those  who  govern  it,  can  do,  will  be 
to  go  by  things,  not  names,  to  sift  my 
arguments  as  closely  as  I  shall  analyze 
the  evidence  and  the  hasty  inferences  in 
the  greatest  judicial  error  of  modern 
times. 

The  verdict  against  the  Stauntons  and 
Rhodes  is  a  hodge-podge,  in  which  the 
leg-all v  criminal  and  the  legally  culpable 


EE A  DIANA. 


333 


are  confounded,  and  both  sets  of  legal 
culprits  are  confounded  with  the  moral 
culprits,  who  are  clear  of  the  case  by  the 
law  of  England  and  the  rules  of  evidence 
that  bind  the  Central  Criminal  Court. 

Few  observers  of  mankind  will  deny  me 
this,  which,  indeed,  reads  like  a  truism  : 

Whore  A,  B,  and  C  confound  four 
things,  and  D,  on  the  same  evidence,  dis- 
tinguishes them,  it  is  a  thousand  to  one 
that  D  is  right,  and  A,  B,  and  C  are 
wrong. 

The  position  becomes  even  stronger 
when  we  find  that  A,  B,  and  C  have  been 
subject  to  several  confusing  influences. 
It  may  be  worth  while  to  point  out  the 
confusing  processes  that  muddled  the 
jury,  of  which  processes  some  rise  from 
the  habitual  malpractices  of  this  particu- 
lar court,  and  others  from  faults  that 
have  been  imported  into  it  for  this  single 
occasion. 

Processes  of  Confusion. 

1.  The  court,  for  its  convenience,  tried 
four  dissimilar  cases  in  the  lump,  and  the 
four  prisoners  stood  together  at  the  bar. 

2.  Being  near  and  dear  to  each  other, 
and  involved  in  one  danger,  they  suffered 
and  sympathized  openly. 

3.  Twelve  unguarded  men  looked  on, 
and,  deluded  by  the  senses,  which  are  al- 
ways stronger  than  the  judgment  in  un- 
trained minds,  said  to  themselves,  "  they 
are  all  in  one  boat."  So  they  were — in 
one  family  boat,  not  one  legal  boat.  But 
the  family  boat  being  in  a  legal  dock, 
these  good  souls  took  it  for  a  legal  boat 
directly. 

4.  The  four  separate  indictments,  with 
their  curious  counts,  would  have  tended 
to  cure  this.  But  here  the  malpractices 
of  the  court  came  in  with  another  process 
of  confusion. 

By  the  law  of  England  the  arraignment 
of  a  prisoner  consists  of  three  parts  :  (a) 
He  is  called  to  the  bar  by  his  name  ;  (ft) 
the  indictment  is  read  to  him,  every  syl- 
lable of  it ;  (c)  he  is  invited  to  plead  to  the 
indictment,  and  no  other  form  of  words, 
and  he  has  a  right  to  plead  guiltj*  to  one 
count,  and  not  guilty  to  another  count ; 
and,   if    he    is   legally  culpable,  but  not 


criminal,  it  is  the  wisest  thing  he  can 
do. 

This  being  done  by  the  clerk  of  ar- 
raigns, the  paper  that  clerk  has  read  from 
becomes,  from  the  universal  practice  of 
all  our  courts,  the  property  of  the  jury  so 
long  as  that  trial  lasts. 

But  the  clerk  of  arraigns,  by  a  modern 
malpractice,  broke  this  just  and  necessary 
law,  and  the  judge  let  him.  So  each 
prisoner  was  grossly  robbed  of  his  right 
to  admit  one  count  and  deny  another,  and 
the  jury  were  grossly  robbed  of  a  copy  of 
the  indictment,  though  the  mere  prelim- 
inary jury,  whose  responsibility  is  so 
much  less,  had  one  to  study  and  find  a 
true  bill  on  ;  and  though  it  is  not  merely 
the  right  but  the  duty  of  the  jury,  as  laid 
down  by  Blackstone  himself  very  clearly, 
to  study  the  indictment  very  closely  and 
to  find  ''guilty  "  on  one  count,  and  "not 
guilty  "  on  another,  and  to  carry  discrim- 
ination even  further,  for  they  can  find 
guilty  on  one  half  of  a  divisible  count  and 
acquit  upon  the  other. 

5.  Law,  justice,  and  common  sense  hav- 
ing thus  been  defied  by  the  Central  Crim- 
inal Court,  and  the  great  written  instru- 
ment of  discrimination  withheld  from 
them  contrary  to  law,  they  were  manipu- 
lated and  confused  by  a  rhetorician  on  the 
Bench,  who  picked  out  the  highest  count 
and  ignored  the  others,  and  with"  gentle 
hand  extinguished  their  one  faint  gleam 
of  incipient  discrimination,  and  left  no 
doubt  to  the  jury  in  a  case  crammed  with 
doubts  ;  which  was  unprecedented. 

The  result  corresponded  with  all  these 
co-operating  processes. 

The  judge  laid  down  the  law  that  who- 
ever has  by  law,  or  takes  upon  himself, 
the  charge  of  a  helpless  person  and  does 
not  give  her  enough  to  live  upon  is  guilty 
of  murder  by  omission.  He  did  not  say 
whoever  has  one-fourth  of  the  charge,  for 
that  is  not  the  law. 

The  Charge. 

Under  this  ruling,  on  which  I  have 
something  to  say  hereafter,  the  jury  on 
the  evidence  contrived  to  see  four  persons, 
all  of  whom  had  either  by  law  or  their 
own  act  "  the  charge  "  of  Harriet  Stauu- 


334 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


ton,  and  all  saw  her  pine  to  death  and  let 
her  pine  to  death. 

Now  let  all  men,  in  whose  minds  the 
very  landmarks  of  truth  are  not  obliter- 
ated, look  on  that  picture  conjured  up  by 
a  jury  under  several  processes  of  confusion 
along  with  this  picture  which  the  evidence 
reveals  to  a  discriminating:  eye. 

Patrick  Staunton,  a  committer  of  a 
crime,  responsible  for  Harriet  Staunton's 
life  by  a  pecuniary  contract  with  Louis. 
He  docks  her  food,  strikes  her,  terrifies 
and  strikes  bis  wife  for  interfering-,  etc. 
The  evidence  suggests  that  if  the  man 
had  died  in  1STG,  Harriet  Staunton  might 
be  alive  now.  He  comes  under  the  judge's 
ruling.  Hr  had  •■flic  charge."  This  is 
the  only  committer  of  them  all.  Yet  the 
jury  can  see  nothing  exceptional  in  his 
position.  We  now  step  down  to  a  much 
lower  grade  of  crime. 

The  Mere  Omitters. 

At  the  head  is  Mrs.  Patrick  Staunton, 
a  grown-up  woman,  experienced,  and  no 
fool.  Her  neglect  of  Harriet,  is  prima 
facie  barbarous;  but  it  transpires  that, 
there  was  conjugal  influence  and  coercion. 
The  woman  encountered  blows  in  defense 
of  the  victim.  The  deterring  effect  of 
those-  blows,  and  her  pregnancy,  cannol 
be  exactly  estimated  :  nor  is  it  necessary. 
The  law.  already  disposed  to  assume 
conjugal  influence,  except  in  an  indisput- 
able case  of  murder,  is  amply  satisfied 
with  the  admissions  made  on  this  head, 
and  she  is  not  a  criminal,  but  a  culpable 
offender.  Two  years"  imprisonment.  The 
next  omitter  is  Clara  Brown.  She  slept 
in  the  same  room  with  the  victim  ;  allowed 
the  vermin  to  accumulate  ;  saw  her  suffer- 
ings more  than  Mrs.  P.  Staunton  :  filled 
her  own  belly  and  let  her  perish  ;  nor  did 
she  show  any  positive  goodness  of  heart, 
as  the  elder  woman  did  once  or  twice.  I 
mean  she  never  faced  a  blow  nor  got  an 
angry  word,  and  she  never  told  a  soul  till 
the  Crown  solicitor  inspired  her  wiih 
higher  sentiments.  On  the  other  hand, 
she  was  young,  inexperienced,  and  stupid; 
and,  though  she  saw  most  of  the  victim, 
never  anticipated  her  death,  which  blind- 
ness in  her  rouses  a  suspicion   that  the 


whole  set  were  much  greater  fools  and 
smaller  villains  than  they  look.  We  now 
take  a  step  in  law  which  is  as  wide  as  the 
step  down  from  the  one  committer  to  the 
four  omitters.  We  go  out  of  the  house. 
We  don't  even  go  next  door,  but  to  an- 
other house  a  mile  distant,  where  two 
self-indulgent  adulterers  were  hiding 
themselves  from  Harriet  Staunton  and 
absorbed  in  adultery,  which  was  made 
smooth  by  Patrick's  control  of  the  in- 
jured wife.  I  never  knew  how  low  the 
human  understanding  could  sink  till  I 
saw  a  jury  who  could  confound  this  situa- 
tion with  that  of  Mrs.  Patrick  Staunton 
and  Clara  Brown,  two  people  living  in 
the  house  where  Harriet  Staunton  pined 
on  the  firsl  floor.  That  first  floor  Louis 
Staunton  and  Alice  Rhodes  avoided  from 
self-indulgent  motives,  that  are  out  of  the 
case.  Of  these  two  persons,  the  law 
never  had  any  hold  on  Rhodes.  A  mis- 
tress living  in  one  house  is  not  bound  to 
provide  food  for  a  wife  living  in  another. 
Rhodes  is  out  of  tin'  case.  Louis  Staun- 
ton, until  somi'  day  in  A.ugust,  1H7G,  was 
deep  in  the  case.  Put,  flic  judge,  in  or- 
der to  make  hostile  comments  on  his 
niggardliness,  let  in  as  evidence  that  he 
made  a  contract  with  Patrick  Staunton 
of  this  kind — Patrick  was  to  receive  Har- 
riet, in  his  own  house,  and  receive  twenty 
shillings  per  week.  Louis  was  a  mean 
scoundrel  to  offer  so  small  a  sum,  but  a 
rustic  laborer  and  eight  children  live  on 
less.  It,  crushes  the  charge  of  murder  as 
completely  as  twenty  pounds  a  week 
would.  It  is  a  contract  in  which  both 
contracting  parties  contemplated,  not  the 
death,  but  the  indefinite  life  of  Harriet 
Staunton.  Its  very  niggardliness  proves 
that  on  behalf  of  Louis  Staunton.  A  man 
can  transfer  his  legal  responsibility.  It 
is  done  daily.  The  legal  responsibility  of 
Louis  Staunton  passed  by  that  pecuniary 
contract  to  Patrick  as  much  as  did  the 
responsibility  of  that  mother,  who  handed 
her  child  for  five  shillings  a  week  to  a 
baby-farmer,  which  baby-farmer  neglect- 
ed the  child  till  it  died  a  bag  of  bones, 
and  was  tried  by  Sir  James  Hawkins  two 
days  after  theStauntons.  (See  The  Daily 
Telegraph,  Oct.  1.)     The  attempts  made 


BE  A  DIANA. 


to  drag-  Rhodes  into  the  case  at  all.  and 
to  drag-  Louis  back  into  it  after  admis- 
sion of  that  contract,  are  pure  sophistry 
and  equivocation,  as  I  shall  show  in  the 
proper  place.  Meantime  here  is  the  true 
picture. 

1.  Committer  and  criminal. 

2.  Culpable  omitters ;  one  condemned 
to  die,  one  walking-  about  London. 

3  and  4.  Two  vile  moral  omitters  clear 
of  the  crime,  but  relieved  by  the  lawyers 
of  all  their  ill-gotten  money,  defended 
with  admirable  speeches,  but  worse  de- 
fended on  the  evidence  than  they  could 
have  defended  themselves,  and  con- 
demned to  die. 

The  blunder  has  been  brought  about 
partly  by  the  recent  malpractices,  and  the 
inherent  defects,  of  the  Central  Criminal 
Court,  whose  system  is  so  faulty  that  it 
never  gets  below  the  surface  of  a  case, 
and  is  the  worst  instrument  for  the  dis- 
covery of  truth  in  Europe ;  and  partly 
from  special  vices  and  errors,  that  found 
their  way  into  the  case,  and  surprise  the 
whole  legal  profession,  so  opposed  are 
they  to  precedent,  and  to  the  best  tradi- 
tions, and  most  sober  habits,  of  the  court. 
These  it  will  be  my  next  duty  to  analyze 
closeby,  but  I  think  I  can  hit  upon  a  briefer 
method  than  I  have  been  able  to  pursue 
in  this  letter. 

Your  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 


FIFTH  LETTER. 

October  12th,  1877. 

Sir — Were  I,  who  denounce  an  indis- 
criminating  verdict  upon  four  immoral 
egotists,  to  indorse  the  indiscriminating 
censure  leveled  at  the  judge  who  tried 
the  case,  I  should  exceed  the  error  I  con- 
demn, for  I  should  be  morally  unjust  to 
the  good,  he  has  only  been  legally  unjust 
to  a  portion  of  the  bad. 

I  declare,  then,  that  he  had  no  power 
to  prevent  one  of  the  omitters  from  giv- 
ing evidence  against  the   others,  whose 


mouths  were  closed  by  an  iniquity  of 
the  law  which  is  itself  doomed  to  death  ; 
nor  had  he  any  right  to  disparage  her 
whole  evidence,  but  only  to  reject  one 
part  and  sift  the  rest  with  keen  suspi- 
cion ;  and,  when  he  directed  the  jury  to 
prefer  the  opinion  of  doctors  who  had 
seen  the  body,  to  that  of  doctors  who 
had  not,  and  bade  the  jury  observe  the 
ugly  circumstance  that  Harman,  the  doc- 
tor who  had  watched  the  post-mortem 
examination  on  behalf  of  the  defendants, 
was  not  called  for  the  defense,  he  did  his 
duty  to  the  jury,  guided  by  innumerable 
precedents,  which  not  only  justified,  but 
bound  him.  He  did  not  make  the  rules 
of  evidence  :  he  found  the  rules  of  evi- 
dence, and  very  wise  they  are.  In  a 
word,  I  will  not  willfully  object  to  any- 
thing but  what  defies  precedent,  and  the 
habits  of  our  other  judg-es,  and  every  one 
of  their  predecessors,  whose  name  their 
country   honors. 

1 .  The  judge  laid  down  the  law  thus,  as 
affecting  the  only  count  of  a  suppressed 
indictment  which  he  permitted  the  jury  to 
try;  "  every  person  who  is  under  a  legal 
duty,  whether  such  duty  be  imposed  by 
the  law,  or  imposed  by  contract,  or  b3r 
the  act  of  taking  charge,  wrongfully,  or 
otherwise,  of  another  person,  to  provide 
the  necessaries  of  life,  every  such  person 
is  criminally  responsible  for  the  culpable 
neglect  of  that  duty.  And  if  the  person 
so  neglected,  is,  from  age,  insanity, 
health,  or  any  other  cause,  unable  to 
take  care  of  himself,  and  by  reason  of 
that  neglect,  death  ensues,  the  crime  is 
murder." 

Now  this  is  the  law  if  you  don't  stretch 
it,  and  try  to  catch  more  fish  than  the 
law  allows.  It  is  the  law  as  it  lies  in  the 
Text-Books,  and  is  there  applied  to  a 
single  person,  having  the  sole  legal 
charge. 

But  as  regards  these  four  offenders  it 
is  too  broad  and  loose,  and  is  not  the  law 
of  England  as  appears  in  the  cases  to 
which  those  very  text-books  refer,  and  in 
fifty  other  cases,  well  known,  though  not 
reported  by  lawyers,  but  only  word  for 
word  by  the  newspapers.  These  are 
shunned  by   the   lawyers  ;    they  are  in- 


336 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


valuable  ;  but  then  they  are  not  published 
and  sold  by  that  sacred  clique. 

However,  the  cases  of  criminal  omis- 
sion, though  pitiably  reduced  in  number 
by  that  childish  prejudice,  are,  I  think, 
fatal  to  this  new  theory  of  criminal  re- 
sponsibility in  the  hig-hest  degree  attach- 
ing to  persons  who  have  not  the  sole 
charge  in  law  of    the  murdered    pera  a. 

What  will  my  readers  think,  and  what 
will  the  Hume  Secretary  think,  when  I 
tell  him  that  to  find  in  the  books  a  ver- 
dict of  murder  by  omission  I  must  go 
back  to  ninety-seven  years — to  a  lime 
when  jurymen  were  so  used  to  shed  blood 
like  water  by  statute  law  that  they  nat- 
urally applied  even  the  common  law  with 
a  severity  that  is  now  out  of  date. 

1.  who  with  these  eyes  have  seen  a  boy 

of  eighteen  hanged  for  stealing  a  horse, 
though  the  jury  could  have  saved  him, 
and  the  judge  could  have  saved  him,  with 
a  word,  am  nol  disposed  to  rate  beyoud 
its  value  the  ease  of  "  Rex  v.  Squires,"  on 
which  Sir  J.  Hawkins.  I  think,  reli 
less  to  stretch  it  ad  infinitum,  where  the 
jury  that  hanged  him  restricted  it  so 
closely. 

In  L790  the  Crown  indicted  Squires  and 
his  wife  for  murder.  They  had  starve  d  a 
young  apprentice,  and  beaten  him  cruelly. 
The  wife,  as  to  Hie  beating,  could  not  In- 
law prove  conjugal  influence,  for  she  had 
beaten  the  hoy  in  her  husband's  absence, 
which  bars  that  idea.  The  post-mortem, 
however, revealed  starvation,  and  not  the 
boy's  wounds,  to  he  the  cause  of  death. 
The  jury  found  Squires  guilty  of  murder  : 
but  they  held  that  Mrs.  Squires  had  not 
in  this,  as  she  had  in  the  blows,  acted  in- 
dependently of  her  husband.  She  had 
not  intercepted  any  food  her  husband  had 
given  her  for  the  boy. 

If  this  case  is  to  be  acted  on  in  our  day, 
at  least  we  should  not  garble,  and  take 
the  sanguinary  half.  The  jury  acquitted 
Mrs.  Squires,  a  far  worse  woman  than 
Mrs.  P.  Staunton,  and  they  acquitted 
her  logically.  In  a  case  of  omission  they 
could  not  convict  the  husband  capitally 
but  by  loading  him  with  the  whole 
charge,  and  the  whole  criminality  of  a 
joint   act.     Does   this   case,    looked    into 


and  understood,  support  the  new  theory 
of  criminal  responsibility,  infinitely  di- 
visible, without  diminution  of  guilt. 

A  leading  case  of  our  own  day.  and 
therefore  a  better  guide  for  us,  is  "  The 
Queen  v.  Bubb  and  Hook."'  Elizabeth 
Bubb  was  a  widow  with  two  children, 
and  sister  to  Richard  Hook's  wife,  de- 
ceased.  Hook  invited  her  into  his  house, 
and  gave  her  money  to  keep  the  family. 
She  fed  and  clothed  her  own  family,  and 
half  starved  the  poor  dead  sister's.  She 
carried  her  cruelty  so  far  that  the  neigh- 
bors remonstrated  often,  hut  Hook  looked 
calmly  on,  and  did  not  mind.  By  steady- 
degrees  this  fiendish  woman  murdered 
Hook's  youngest  child  by  starvation 
and  cold.  She  was  indicted  for  murder. 
The  jury  did  not  conceal  their  horror, 
but  they  used  their  right,  and  reduced 
the  crime  to  manslaughter;  but,  as 
thai   verdict    opens    the    door  to    lenient 

sentences,  they  guarded  the  .judge  in  a 
way  that  shows  how  wise  twelve  plain 
men  can  he  when  each  of  them  thinks 
for  himself.  They  brought  it  in  "ag- 
gravated manslaughter."  Hook  was 
tried  for  manslaughter  at  the  same 
assize.  As  he  had  supplied  Bubb  with 
tie-re  was  nothing  against  him 
but  his  apathy  and  neglect  of  his  pining 
child,  and  his  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  re- 
monstrances. 1:  was  left  to  the  jury 
to  decide  whether  this  was  culpable 
neglect,  or  stupid  neglect  in  a  father — 
not  an  outsider,  like  Rhodes.  They  de- 
cided for  stupid  neglect,  and  acquitted 
Hook.  Here  is  the  same  principle.  They 
were  resolved  to  put  the  saddle  on  the 
right  horse,  and  not  upon  two  horses. 
Will  my  readers  pause,  ami  compare  the 
guilt  of  the  heartless,  relentless  fiend 
Bubb — sole  instigator,  sole  executor  of 
a  deadly  deed,  in  spite  of  remonstrances 
— with  the  case  of  Mrs.  Patrick  Staun- 
ton, a  wife,  and  under  influence,  who  in 
her  moments  of  conscience  resisted  the 
cruelty,    and   was  overpowered. 

If  you  divide  an  apple  into  four  pieces, 
you  have  four  pieces,  but  not  four  apples. 
If,  in  a  case  of  omission,  you  could  really 
divide  the  legal  charge,  and  the  highest 
criminal  responsibility,   the  effect  would 


READIANA. 


337 


not  be  what  Sir  J.  Hawkins  told  the  jury 
the  effect  would  be — to  subdivide  and 
fritter  away  the  criminal  responsibility 
till  it  should  escape  the  lash  of  the  law, 
and  meet  no  punishment  but  public  rep- 
robation. 

Example — two  Welsh  parents  had  an 
imbecile  girl,  who  professed  sanctity  and 
fasting,  and  the  old  people  made  their 
money  out  of  her.  Incredulous  doctors 
demanded  a  test.  Parents  consented. 
Doctors  watched  night  and  day,  and 
went  at  the  first  plunge  much  deeper 
than  the  Stauntons ;  for  they  stopped  all 
supplies  dead  short.  They  killed  her 
quick  among'  them.  The  doctors  sat 
round  her  bed  and  saw  the  lamp  of  life 
burn  out  in  eight  days.  Vulgar  curiosity 
does  not  excuse  deliberate  murder.  See 
now  if  by  any  quibbling  or  evasion  the 
conduct  of  the  parents  can  be  taken  out 
of  murder — as  the  law  was  laid  down  for 
the  Stauntons,  see  above — or  the  doctors 
cleared  of  manslaughter.  Clean  stoppage 
of  food  is  the  short  cut  to  murder,  with 
the  goal  in  sight  all  the  way. 

Insufficient  supply  of  food  is  an  uncer- 
tain road  to  manslaughter.  The  victim 
ma}r  get  used  to  it.  Luigi  Cornaro 
achieved  a  vast  longevity  by  no  other 
means  than  insufficient  nutriment  arrived 
at  by  degrees.  If  divided  responsibility 
leaves  seven  people  equally  responsible, 
why  were  not  those  parents  and  doctors 
all   hanged  ? 

2.  "  Imposed  by  Law,  or  Imposed  by 
Contract." 

True.  But  throughout  this  case  he 
withheld  from  the  jury  that  when  the 
law  and  lawful  contract  are  opposed, 
contract  prevails.  In  order  to  submit 
to  the  jury  some  just  comments  on  the 
niggardly  wretch,  Louis  Staunton,  and 
the  20s.  he  agreed  to  pay  Patrick  to 
house  and  board  his  wife,  he  let  in  the 
paltry  contract  as  evidence  ;  yet  he  with- 
held from  the  jury  the  immediate  legal 
effect  of  the  contract.  This  was  to  give 
Patrick  the  sole  charge  of  the  wife,  and 
the  sole  criminal  responsibility  of  the 
highest  degree. 

The  legal  responsibility   passed   clean 


out  of  Louis  by  passing  into  Patrick. 
Had  Louis  failed  to  pay  weekly,  Patrick 
could  have  sued  him. 

Whether  a  responsibility  originally  so 
sacred  as  a  husband's  could  not  bo  revived 
partially,  and  in  a  lower  form,  by  Louis 
constantly  visiting  his  wife  and  actually 
seeing  her  pine  away,  and  whether  this 
would  not  make  him  guilty  of  man- 
slaughter is  another  matter,  and  one  I 
shall  deal  with  under  another  head;  but 
I  complain  that  the  judge  withheld  his 
legal  knowledge  from  the  jury  whenever 
it  could  serve  a  prisoner,  of  which  this  is 
one  example. 

3.  Another  is  his  dead  silence  as  to 
Mrs.  P.  Staunton's  legal  position  as  a 
wife,  and  the  influence  of  her  husband 
upon  her  as  well  as  on  Rhodes — an  in- 
fluence the  law  is  not  unwilling  to  assume, 
though  of  course  it  can  be  rebutted,  as 
when  Mrs.  Manning  was  proved  to  be  the 
instigator  of  a  joint  crime.  But  here  the 
husband  had  by  contract  the  sole  legal 
charge,  like  Squires  in  1790. 

4.  Illegal  and  improper  evidence  was 
admitted,  such  as  no  prisoner  with  his 
mouth  closed  has  ever  been  assassinated 
by  in  my  time.  Clara  Brown  was  al- 
lowed to  depose  to  the  existence  of  a  let- 
ter written  by  Louis  Staunton  to  Alice 
Rhodes  in  August.  1876.  That  was  allow- 
able, for  Rhodes  admitted  having  received 
and  lost  a  letter.  But  now  comes  the 
legal  wrong.  She  was  allowed  to  own 
herself  a  thief  as  regarded  that  particu- 
lar letter,  and  also  what  the  old  judges 
called  "a  spoliator  of  evidence." 

As  regarded  that  one  letter,  I  mean  she 
was  allowed  to  depose  that  she  had  burned 
it  willfully,  and  with  her  own  hand,  and 
yet  she  was  permitted  to  take  advantage 
of  her  own  suppression  of  the  real  letter, 
to  give  ~by  memory  or  imagination  just 
so  many  words  as  the  Crown  solicitor, 
who  got  up  the  case,  thought  might  suf- 
fice to  hang  Louis  Staunton  by  an  equivo- 
cation pointing  to  murder,  and  an  admis- 
sion of  long  criminal  intimacy,  to  prove 
adultery  before  as  well  as  after  marriage. 
"Spoliation  of  evidence  "  does  not  figure 
much  in  the  text-books.  You  must  go 
wide  and   deep  to   find   the  hundreds  of 


338 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


cases  that  lie  behind  all  the  older  maxims 
of  law.  "  Assume  everything  to  the  dis- 
credit of  a  spoliator  of  evidence  "  is  the 
maxim,  and  the  person  who  destroys  any 
written  document  divining- its  importance 
is  certainly  a  spoliator  of  evidence.  But 
if  the  good,  though  almost  obsolete, 
phrase  be  objected  to,  I  will  resign  it,  and 
stick  to  the  substance.  Why.  even  at 
Nisi  Prius.  if  a  witness,  to  decide  a  case, 
swore  he  received  a  letter  from  a  party, 
who  could  not  be  put  in  the  box.  and 
proved  that  he  really  had  received  a  let- 
ter from  that  person  of  some  kind  or 
other,  would  he  be  allowed  to  say  ••  I 
burned  tin'  letter,  seeing  its  importance; 
the  writer  cannot  be  called  to  contradict 
me,  so  I  remember  enough  of  the  coa- 
tents  t<i  win  this  verdict,  650,000,  for  t he 
party  who  puts  me  in  tin'  box" — would 
not  the  judge  hesitate  to  let  the  jury's 
mind  be  prejudiced  by  hearing  tins  wit- 
ness's garbled  quotations!''  If  another 
hand  had  burned  it,  well  and  good;  but 
surely  not  when  he  hail  burned  it  himself, 
and  so  put  the  court  entirely  at  t  lie  mercy 
of  partial  quotation  and  misquotation.  I 
am  of  opinion,  subject  to  the  decision  of 
the  judges  and  ii  is  quite  time  they  sal 
to  review  criminal  cases —thai  this  sham 
reproduction  of  a  selected  and  garbled 
part  of  a  written  Inter  the  witness  hail 
willfully  destroyed  was  legally  inadmissi- 
ble against  two  prisoners  whose  mouths 
were  sealed. 

I  shall  show  in  my  next  that  this 
violation,  not  of  some  pedantic  rule  of 
evidence,  but  of  its  very  fund  anient  a  1 
principles,  lets  a  whole  vein  of  romantic 
error  into  the  case,  and  shall  expose  gen- 
erally the  false  system  by  which  the  order 
of  t he  facts  was  dislocated  and  the  facts 
falsified. 

Yours  faithfully. 

Chaeles  Reape. 

I  beg  to  acknowledge  with  thanks  some 
insulting  letters  from  people  who  don't 
sign  their  names,  and  some  encouraging 
ones  from  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  do. 


SIXTH  LETTER. 

October  ISth,  IS??. 

Sir — In  reply  to  reasonable  comments 
let  me  say  I  have  not  put  forward  that 
branch  of  law  which  concerns  the  aid- 
ing and  abetting  any  kind  of  murder, 
whether  by  commission  or  omission,  be- 
cause the  judge  did  not  lay  that  down  to 
the  jury,  and  he  was  bound  to  do  so  if 
that    was  the  law   lie  relied  on. 

He  never  treated  Louis  Staunton  as  an 
•■  accessor}'  before  the  fact.'-  which  under 
this  head  of  law  was  the  only  cap  that 
could  be  made  ti>  fit  him.  He  never  told 
the  jury  what  precise  evidence  the  law  de- 
mands against  a  man  who  has  made  a 
niggardly  contracl  contemplating,  by  its 
very  niggardliness,  the  indefinite  life  of 
the  victim,  ere  a  jury  is  to  pronounce 
thai  he  did  "  procure,  counsel,  command 
and  abet  *'  the  murder  of  that  person. 

(if  course  no  lawyer  will  pretend  that 
a  man  living  out  of  the  house  of  murder 
can  be  accessory  at  tin-  fact,  or  what 
the  text-books  call  "a  principal  in  the 
first  degree;  "  nor  will  any  lawyer  deny 
that  if  he  lives  out  of  the  house,  but  pro- 
cures, counsels,  commands,  or  abets  the 
murder,  beyond  <l<>iiht,  he  ran  be  an  ac- 
cessory  before  the  fact,  or  a  principal  in 
the  second  degree.  But  there  must  be 
high  evidence,  and  direel  evidence,  and  if 
spoken  or  written  words  are  relied  on 
they  musl  be  addressed  to  the  very  person 
who  does  the  murder,  and  must  be  une- 
quivocal. A  doubtful  phrase  addressed  to 
Rhodes,  who  took  no  part  in  the  murder, 
is  not  at  all  the  kind  of  evidence  required 
by  till  the  books  and  all  the  cases.  See 
the  word  "accessory"  in  any  text-book 
or  report    whatever. 

The   Facts. 

In  our  Criminal  Court,  where  the  pris- 
oners, the  only  people  who  really  know 
the  ins  and  outs  of  the  case,  are  not 
allowed  to  open  their  lips,  and  correct 
any  of  the  shallow  guess  work  that  is 
going  on  about  them  in  their  astonished 
ears,  one  great  abuse  like  that  I  de- 
nounced in  my  last  letter  is  sure  to  let 
in   many  more.     Clara    Brown,  the    one 


RE  A  DIANA. 


(39 


witness  on  whom  the  case  for  the  Crown 
really  depends,  was  allowed  by  the  judge 
to  swear  she  had  destroyed  a  letter,  and 
yet  to  cite  so  much  of  it,  correctly  or  in- 
correctly, as  fitted  the  two  horns  of  the 
prosecution.  That  abuse  led  at  once  to 
another.  This  model  witness  was  al- 
lowed another  privilege  the  rules  of  evi- 
dence do  Dot  grant — viz.,  to  argue  the 
case.  For  this  the  defendants  are  in- 
debted to  their  counsel. 

He  asked  whether  she  understood  the 
sentence  about  Harriet  being  '•  out  of 
the  way  "  to  refer  to  her  death.  To  this 
question  she  replied  "Yes." 

French  counsel  surprised  bjr  a  prosecu- 
tion would  immediately  have  had  a  per- 
sonal conference  with  the  prisoners,  and 
would  have  asked,  the  girl  questions  that 
would  have  greatly  benefited  the  prison- 
ers. The  jury,  hearing  a  witness  swear 
to  an  interpretation  of  a  doubtful 
phrase,  were  not  aware  this  was  not 
evidence,  and  ought  severely  to  be  re- 
jected from  their  minds.  So  one  abuse 
led  to  another,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  this  imaginary  letter  with  the 
witness's  black-hearted  interpretation  is 
the  rope  that  is  to  hang  Louis  Staun- 
ton. 

Well,  such  a  rope  of  sand  has  never 
hanged  an  Englishman  in  my  day.  It  is 
pitiable  to  see  how  little,  if  anything,  that 
can  even  by  c,ourtesy  be  called  mental 
power,  was  brought  to  bear  by  twelve 
men  of  the  world  on  this  quotation  of  a 
letter  without  its  contents,  one  of  the 
stalest  frauds  in  the  world  and  also  in 
literature  of  eveiy  kind,  especially  con- 
troversial theology. 

Permit  me  to  test  this  imaginary  ex- 
tract from  what  was  proved,  I  think,  to 
be  a  real  letter,  by  one  or  two  sure 
methods  of  which  I  am  not  the  in- 
ventor. 

Have  those  twelve  gentlemen  counted 
the  number  of  words  a  young  servant 
girl  swore  she  had  remembered  in  their 
exact  order  for  nine  months  or  more, 
though  she  had  burned  the  letter,  and 
the  subject  had  never  been  recalled  to 
her  mind  till  she  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  prosecution  ? 


The  words  are  sixty-two  in  number  : 

'  ■  My  own  Darling — I  was  very  sorry 
to  see  you  cry  when  I  left  you.  It  seems 
as  though  it  never  must  be,  but  there 
will  be  a  time  when  Harriet  will  be  out 
of  the  way,  and  we  shall  be  happy  to- 
gether. Dear  Alice,  you  must  know  how 
I  love  you  by  this  time.  We  have  been 
together  two  years  now." 

Now,  sir,  even  if  those  fatal  words 
about  a  time  when  Harriet  will  be  out  of 
the  way  were  ever  written  without  some 
explanatory  context,  I  think  the  jury 
ought  to  have  been  throughout  solemnly 
warned  and  guarded  against  the  illogical 
interpretation  of  them.  The  just  rule  of 
interpretation  is  that  you  should  always 
prefer  a  literal  to  a  vague  or  metaphori- 
cal interpretation.  The  words  "out  of 
the  way "  mean  out  of  the  way  ;  they 
don't  mean  dead.  A  man  can  say 
"dead,"  and  if  Rhodes  was  projecting 
murder  with  him,  why  should  he  not 
have  said  so  ? 

The  next  rule  is,  that  you  prefer,  the 
interpretation  which  the  writer  himself 
confesses  by  his  own  act,  and  the  next  is, 
that  you  prefer  the  interpretation  that  is 
first  fulfilled  in  order  of  time.  Now,  it 
was  Louis,  the  writer  of  the  words,  who 
took  a  farm  soon  after,  settled  Harriet 
with  Patrick,  and  so  got  her  out  of  the 
way,  and  lived  in  smooth  adultery  with 
Rhodes,  whereas  it  was  other  people  who 
killed  Harriet  Staunton,  and  nine  months 
afterward.  But  I  shall  now  show  the  ex- 
tract as  sworn  to  was  never  written. 

1st  objection. — It  is  too  long,  and  too 
short,  which  two  traits  can  never  meet  in 
a  genuine  extract. 

A.  Too  long  for  a  servant  girl  to  re- 
member, word  for  word,  nine  months 
after  hearing  it. 

B.  Too  short.  Louis  Staunton  was  not 
preparing  his  own  prosecution.  It  was 
not  on  the  cards  of  mere  accident  that  he 
should  furnish  in  sixty-two  words  two 
equivocal  expressions  —  one  establishing 
a  long  adulterous  intercourse  of  which 
there  is  no  corroborative  proof,  but  the 
reverse,  and   another  quibble   projecting 


340 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


distant  murder,  of  which  there  is  no 
corroborative  proof,  since  Harriet  was 
well  used  for  months  after. 

2.  The  iine  reminding  her  she  had  been 
his  mistress  for  two  years  is  worded 
by  a  woman,  and  not  bv  Staunton  or 
any  man.  Decent  women  like  Clara 
Brown  have  a  delicate  vocabulary  un- 
known to  men.  "We  have  been  to- 
gether," which  means  everything-  the 
prosecution  wanted,  but  says  nothing  at 
all,  is  a.  woman's  word  for  criminal  con- 
nection. 

3.  The  statement  itself  is  not  true,  and 
from  that  you  must  argue  backward 
against  the  genuineness  of  the  quot.it  ion. 
since  he  would  not  say  this  to  a  girl  who 
knew  better.* 

4.  The  witness  could  remember  nothing 
but,  her  lesson:  sixty-two  consecutive 
words,  all  neat  and  telling,  and  meeting 
the  two  great  views  of  the  prosecution; 
hut,  that  done,  a  blank — a  total  blank; 
not  six  consecutive  words.  This  is  bare- 
faced. Daniel  Defoe  would  have  man- 
aged better.  He  would  have  armed  the 
witness  with  ten  consecutive  words  on 
some  matter  quite  foreign  to  the  objects 
of  the  prosecution.  The  quotation  is 
fabricated. 

The  process  has  not  him,-  exceptional  in 
it,  nor  is   there  any  one  to  blame. 
the  court,  for  letting  in   parole   evidence 
aboul    a   written   document   destroyed   by 
the  wit  ness  herself. 

Allow  10,000  such  witnesses,  and,  if  the 
case  is  ably  prepared,  you  must,  in  the 
very  nature  of  things,  have  10.000  inac- 
curate quotations,  all  leaning  toward  the 
side  that  calls  the  witness. 

The  people  who  get  up  a  prosecution 
have  hut  one  way  of  dealing  with  such  a 
witness.  She  comes  to  them  remember- 
ing a  word  here  or  there.  She  is  advised 
to  speak  the  truth  and  take  time.  But. 
as  the  conference  proceeds,  she  is  asked 
whether  she  happens  to  remember  any- 
thing of  such  a  kind?  She  is  very  duc- 
tile, and  forces  her  memory  a  bit  in  the 
direction  she  instinctively  sees  is  desired. 


*  Since  this  letter  was  written,  it  lias  been 
proved  to  be  a  falsehood.  The  criminal  connec- 
tion was  hardly  one  year  old. 


The  very  person  who  is  examining  her 
with  an  ex  parte  view  does  not  see  that 
she  is  so  wax-like  as  she  is. 

Add  a  small  grain  of  self-deception  on 
both  sides,  and  a  mixture  of  truth  and 
falsehood  comes  into  the  unwary  and 
most  inconsistent  court,  which  stops 
Louis  Staunton's  mouth,  yet  lets  in  a 
worse  kind  of  evidence  than  the  prison- 
er's own.  viz.,  this  horrible  hodge-podge 
of  memory,  imagination  and  prompting, 
which,  in  the  very  nature  of  tilings,  and 
by  flu'  mere  infirmity  of  the  human 
mind,  must  he  a  lie. 

That  a  man  should  die  only  because  he 
is  tried  in  England.  Bring  your  minds 
to  bear  on  this,  my  countrymen.  If  an 
ignorant  man,  like  this  Staunton,  is  de- 
fendant in  a  suit  for  fifty-one  pounds,  lie 
can  go  into  the  witness  box  and  explain 
all  the  errors  of  the  plaintiff,  if  any ;  but, 
if  lie  is  tried  for  his  life,  which  is  dearer 
to  every  man  than  all  the  money  in  the 
world,  he  is  not  allowed  to  say  one  word  t-o 
the  jury,  if  he  has  counsel.  Now.  in  Prance 
he  may  speak  after  his  counsel  have  done 
muddling  his  case,  but  here  with  heart- 
less mockery,  when  Ignorance  till  round 
has  hanged  liiin,  he  is  allowed  to  speak — 
To  whom?  To  the  judge.  On  what? 
The  nice  quibbles  of  the  law,  but  not  on 
facts  i  r  motives — that  being  the  one  thing 
he  can  never  do,  and  this  being  the  thing 
he  could  generally  do,  and  Hood  the  grop- 
irl  with  light,  especially  as  to  his 
true  motives  and  the  extenuating  circum- 
stances of  his  case.  By  this  system  the 
blood-thirsty  murderer,  who  chooses  his 
tune,  and  slays  swiftly  in  the  dark,  gains 
;m  advantage  he  cannot  have  in  the 
wiser  courts  of  Europe.  But  God  help 
the  malefactor  who  is  not  an  habitual 
criminal,  or  one  of  the  deepest  dye,  but  a 
mixed  sinner,  who  has  glided  from  folly 
into  sin,  and  from  sin  into  his  first  crime, 
and  who  has  been  fool  as  well  as  villain. 
His  mouth  is  closed,  and  all  the  extenu- 
ating circumstances  that  mouth  could  al- 
ways reveal  are  hidden  with  it,  or,  as  in 
this  case,  grossly  and  foully  perverted 
into  aggravating  circumstances. 

This  is  very  unfair.  The  Nation  will 
see  it  some  day.     At  present  what  is  to 


READIANA. 


341 


be  done?  After  all,  thank  God,  it  is  a 
free  country,  and  one  in  which  bad  law 
is  sometimes  corrected  by  just  men. 

To  all  such  I  appeal  against  the  rope  of 
sand  I  have  had  to  untwist  in  this  letter. 

The  Post  has  enabled  me  to  do  some- 
thing more:  to  resist  foul  play  and  gar- 
bled quotations  and  those  most  dangerous 
of  all  lies,  equivoques  in  language,  such  as 
"  Harriet  out  of  the  way,"  the  very  kind 
of  lies  Holy  Writ  ascribes  to  Satan,  and 
the  great  poets  of  every  age  have  de- 
scribed as  hellish,  which  they  are. 

I  resolved  to  give  Louis  Staunton,  what 
that  den  of  iniquity  and  imbecility,  the 
Central  Criminal  Court,  did  not  give  him, 
one  little  chance  of  untwisting  that  rope 
of  sand,  although  he  has  the  misfortune 
not  to  be  a  Frenchman.  I  conveyed  a 
short  letter  to  Mr.  Louis  Staunton  through 
the  proper  authorities,  requesting  him  to 
tr3r  and  remember  the  entire  matter  of 
a  certain  letter  he  had  unquestionably 
written  to  Alice  Rhodes  in  August,  1S76, 
and  to  send  it  to  me  verbatim.  Some 
delay  took  place  while  my  letter  was  sub- 
mitted to  authorities  outside  the  jail,  but 
Fair  Play  prevailed,  and  I  now  append 
the  letter  to  my  own,  which  is  of  less 
value.  I  send  it  all  the  same,  because  I 
have  looked  narrowly  into  that  of  Staun- 
ton's, and  I  don't  see  any  of  that  self- 
evident  mendacity  I  have  felt  it  my  duty 
to  point  out  in  the  garbled  quotation  the 
rope  of  sand.-  This  letter,  at  all  events, 
may  be  true.  For  here  I  see  youth,  with 
its  selfish  vices,  not  looking  months  and 
months  ahead,  either  for  good  or  bad,  but 
getting  Harriet  out  of  the  w-ay  without  a 
metaphor,  to  enjoy  the  sweet  vice  his 
self-indulgent  soul  was  filled  with,  and 
not  with  long  cold-blooded  schemes  of 
murder  such  as  belong  to  more  hardened 
natures  than  this,  who,  we  learn  from 
the  Crown  itself,  and  on  oath,  sat  clown 
and  cried  because  his  wife  upset  the 
house.     The  following  is 

Louis  Staunton's  Letter. 

Maidstone  Jail,  October  Uth,  1877. 
Sir — I  duly  received  your  letter  of  the 
9tb  inst.,  and  now  beg  to  reply  to  it.   The 


letter  in  question  I  wrote  to  Alice  Rhodes 
on  or  about  August  17,  1876.  The  facts 
are  these:  I  had  several  times  promised 
to. take  Alice  Rhodes  down  to  Brighton 
for  a  week,  but  had  been  prevented  from 
doing  so.  But  on  Saturday,  August  14, 
Mrs.  Staunton,  Alice  Rhodes,  and  mj-self, 
went  down  to  Cudham,  for  the  purpose  of 
leaving  Mrs.  Staunton  there,  that  we 
might  go  to  Brighton  on  the  Tuesdaj' ; 
but  on  the  Monday  I  received  a  telegram 
to  say  my  father  was  worse.  My  brother 
and  myself  immediately  came  up  to  Lon- 
don, leaving  Alice  Rhodes  and  Mrs. 
Staunton  at  Cudham.  I  then  wrote  her 
this  letter : 

"My  own  Darling -I  know  you  will 
be  sorry  to  hear  that  my  poor  dear  father 
passed  away  yesterday.  This  is  a  sad 
blow  to  me,  but  we  all  have  our  troubles. 
Our  trip  must  now  be  put  off  again.  It 
seems  as  if  it  is  not  to  be ;  but  I  will  ar- 
range another  time  to  get  Harriet  out  of 
the  way;  so  you  must  not  be  disap- 
pointed. I  shall  have  to  remain  dow'n 
home  for  a  few  days,  so  Harriet  had 
better  stop  down  with  you." 

I  believe  I  have  now  given  you  word 
for  word  what  I  said  in  this  letter.  I 
have  thought  well  over  it,  and  cannot 
remember  saying  anything  more.  What 
I  meant  by  "  It  seems  as  if  it  is  not  to 
be,"  was  our  going  to  Brighton,  and  of 
getting  "  Harriet  out  of  the  way,"  that 
she  might  not  know  anything  about  it. 
This  is  the  whole  truth  of  the  letter. 
I  am.  sir. 

Yours  obediently, 

Louis  Staunton. 
Charles  Reade,  Esq. 

The  Public  is  to  understand  that  I  deal 
fairly  with  the  Powerful  Journal  which 
has  done  me  the  honor  to  allow  me  to  ex- 
press boldly  my  unalterable  convictions. 
I  do  not  write  letters  and  say  "  Thus  said 
Staunton  ;"  I  tender  you  bis  handwriting, 
begging  you  to  do  me  the  honor  to  keep 
it,  and  show  it  to  few  or  many  as  you 
think  proper.  I  do  not  lead  witnesses  as 
I  think  Clara  Brown  was  led — uncon- 
sciously, no  doubt.     My  short  letter,  to 


342 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


which  this  is  a  reply,  lies  in  Maidstone 
Jail.  I  can't  remember  what  I  write,  like 
this  young  sinner,  nor  imagine  what 
other  people  write — like  Miss  Brown  plus 
an  attorney's  clerk.  But  I  am  sure  it  is 
a  short  line,  just  asking  the  man  to  send 
the  truth.  He  looks  on  himself  as  a 
dying  man  ;  has  no  hope  of  saving  him- 
self:  and  I  think  he  has  come  pretty  near 
the  truth  in  his  letter. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 

P.S. — Now  that  I  have  opened  the  dumb 
creature's  mouth,  which  that  beastly 
court,  the  disgrace  of  Europe,  had  closed. 
who  doubt  s  the  real  meaning  of  the  lei  t  er, 
and  that  the  writer  had  Adultery  in  view, 
and  had  not  Homicide  ? 


THE   LEGAL  VOCABULARY. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette." 

Sir — Now  those  swift-footed  hares,  my 
eloquent  contemporaries,  have  galloped 
over  Diblanc's  trial,  may  I  ask  you,  in 

the  name  of  humanity,  to  let  the  tortoise 
crawl  over  it  with  his  microscopic  eye? 
Where  female  culprits  are  to  he  judged,  a 
patient  drudge,  who  has  studied  that  sex 
profoundly  in  various  walks  of  life,  in- 
cluding Diblanc's,  is  sometimes  a  surer 
exponent  of  facts  than  is  a  learned  law- 
yer. I  will  keep  strictly  within  the  limits 
of  the  legal  defense.  The  Crown  used 
Diblanc  as  its  witness  to  the  killing,  and 
this,  by  a  rule  of  law  which  is  inexorable, 
and  governs  alike  a  suit  oran  indictment, 
let  in  the  prisoner's  explanations  as  evi- 
dence. But  there  are  degrees  of  evidence; 
what  she  said  against  herself  was  first- 
class  evidence  ;  what  she  said  favorable 
to  herself  was  low  evidence,  to  be  received 
when  it  is  contradicted  neither  by  a 
living  witness  nor  a  clear  fact.  I  keep 
within  this  circle,  traced  by  the  judge 
himself,   simply   premising  that  I    have 


seen  many  a  prisoner  acquitted  on  his  own 
explanation  of  motives,  thus  made  ad- 
missible, though  poor  evidence,  by  the 
prosecutor. 

Now  did  the  criminal  seek  the  victim, 
or  the  victim  her  ?  Where  was  the  crime 
committed  ?  In  the  kitchen.  And  what 
is  the  kitchen  ?  It  is  a  poor  man's  cottage 
on  the  ground-floor  of  a  gentleman's 
house.  No  paper— no  carpet- stone  floor 
— it  is  made  like  a  servant's  home  out  of 
contempt;  hut  the  result  of  that  con- 
tempt is,  that  the  female  domestic  feels 
at  home  in  it,  soul  and  body.  It  is  the 
servant's  house,  and  the  cook's  castle  and 
workshop.  To  come  and  insult  her  there 
galls  her  worse  than  in  the  gentlefolk's 
part.  What  a  lady  feels  if  a  cook  walks 
up  into  the  drawing-room  to  affront  her, 
thai  the  cook  feels  if  the  mistress  comes 
down  into  her  cast  le  to  affront  her.  But 
a  kitchen  is  something  else— it  is  an 
arsenal  of  deadly  weapons,  with  every 
one  of  which  the  cook  is  familiar.  The 
principal  an — a  hatchet  to  chop  wood,  a 
rolling-pin,  a  steel  to  sharpen  knives,  a, 
cleaver,  an  enormous  poker,  a  bread 
knife,  carving  knife,  etc.  Into  this  cook's 
castle  and  arsenal  of  lethal  weapons 
comes  Diblanc's  mistress  on  a  Sunday 
forenoon,  when  even  a  cook  is  entitled  to 
a  little  bit  of  peace  and  some  little  reduc- 
tion of  her  labor,  if  possible,  and  gives  an 
inconsiderate  order.  The  cook  says  there's 
no  need  for  that  ;  dinner  is  not  till  seven. 
This  offends  the  mistress,  and  she  threat- 
ens to  discharge  her  on  the  spot.  The 
cook  says  she  will  £-o  directly  if  her 
month's  wages  are  paid  her.  "No,'"  says 
the  mistress,  "I  will  keep  you  your  time  ; 
but  I  will  make  you  suffer."  Here  there 
is  a  lacuna  :  but  the  climax  was  that  the 
mistress  called  this  poor  hard-working 
woman,  in  her  castle  and  workshop,  a 
prostitute,  and  dwelt  upon  the  epithet. 
Then  the  cook,  goaded  to  fury,  took,  not 
one  of  the  murderous  weapons  close  at 
hand,  but  sprang  at  her  mistress's  throat, 
and  griped  it  with  such  fury  that  she 
broke  the  poor  creature's  jaw  and 
throttled  her  on  the  spot,  and  probably 
killed  her  on  the  spot,  whatever  she  may 
have  said  to  the  cent  rary.  The  deed  done, 


READIANA. 


343 


the  criminal  is  all  amazement,  vacillation. 
and  uncertainty  in  word  and  deed.  Her 
deeds  :  She  carries  the  body  wildly  here 
and  there ;  she  puts  a  rope  round  its 
neck  in  a  mad  attempt  to  pass  the  act  off 
for  suicide;  she  resolves  on  flight;  she 
has  not  the  means ;  she  casts  her  eyes 
round,  and  sees  the  safe  with  money  in  it ; 
she  breaks  it  open,  and  takes  enough  for 
her  purpose ;  she  does  not  pillage ;  she 
steals  the  means  of  flight ;  she  robs  in 
self-defense.  Her  words  :  "  I  leave  for 
Paris  this  evening."  Then  a  horror  falls 
on  her  like  a  thunderclap.  "No,  I  shall 
never  see  Paris  again,  not  even  my 
parents.*'  Is  there  nothing  human  in 
this  sudden  cry  of  a  poor  savage  awaking 
to  her  crime?  "I  shall  tr}r  to  leave  for 
America."  So,  then,  she  goes  out  intend- 
ing to  sail  to  America,  and  goes  just 
where  she  did  not  mean  to  go — to  Paris. 
She  gets  there,  and  instantly  pays  a  just 
debt  with  the  money  she  no  longer  needed 
to  save  her  life.  In  other  words,  she  is 
no  more  a  real  thief  than  a  real  murderer, 
as  the  common-sense  of  mankind  under- 
stands the  words.  With  the  light  thus 
reflected  by  her  subsequent  conduct,  all 
vacillation  and  inability  to  carry  out  a 
design,  I  return  to  the  homicide  and  its 
true  interpretation. 

Fact  goes  by  precedent  as  well  as  law, 
and,  strange  to  say,  lawyers,  those  slaves 
of  precedent,  often  forget  this.  Now, 
what  does  experience  or  precedent  teach 
us  with  regard  to  the  murder  of  adults  by 
adults?  Is  the  open  hand  the  weapon 
murder  selects  ?  It  is  the  weapon  cold- 
blooded robbery  has  often  selected  to 
avoid  murder.  But  is  it  the  weapon 
murder  has  often  selected  ?  Certainly 
not.  But  Diblanc's  defense  rests  on  far 
stronger  ground.  The  point  of  her  de- 
fense is  this  :  She  stood  in  an  arsenal  of 
deadly  weapons,  and  yet  avoided  them, 
and  used  the  non-lethal  weapon — her  bare 
hands — being  maddened  to  fury  and 
burning  for  revenge,  but  not  positively 
intending  to  murder  either  before  the 
attack  or  at  the  moment  of  the  attack. 
These  facts,  minutety  examined,  tear  the 
theory  of  "  premeditation  "  up  by  the 
roots ;  but  you  cannot  tear  that  theory 


up  by  the  roots  without  displacing  the 
theor3'  of  "  intention,"  and  letting  in  the 
defendant's  evidence  that  she  did  not  in- 
tend to  kill  Madame  Riel.  And  this  brings 
me  naturally  to  the  nature  and  extent  of 
the  provocation  that  stung  her  to  fury. 

Mr.  Baron  Channell  says  that  no  mere 
words  can  by  provocation  reduce  willful 
killing  to  manslaughter.  Granted  ;  but  I 
think  this  applies  only  to  killing  with 
lethal  weapons.  Where  two  things  com- 
bine— where  A  receives  a  foul  provoca- 
tion in  language  from  B,  and  avoiding 
the  lethal  weapons  close  to  his  hand, 
kills  B  with  the  bare  hand,  I  think 
the  jury  have  a  right  to  call  that  man- 
slaughter if  they  please.  A  calls  B  a  liar  ; 
B  knives  him.  Murder.  B  calls  C  a  liar  ; 
C  fells  him  with  a  blow,  and  kills  him. 
Manslaughter.  Oh,  but  throttling  is 
worse  than  striking.  Ay,  worse  in  a 
man,  but  not  in  a  woman,  because  women 
do  not  fight  with  the  fist;  they  always 
go  at  each  other  with  the  claws,  and  no 
murder  done  one  time  in  a  thousand.  If 
we  are  to  judge  women  we  really  must  not 
begin  by  being  pig-headed  idiots,  and  con- 
founding them  entirely,  mind  and  limbs, 
with  men.  The  truth  is,  language  con- 
tains no  word  with  which  a  man  can 
strike  a  man  to  the  heart,  in  his  own  per- 
son, as  a  woman  can  strike  a  woman  with 
a  word.  It  is  at  once  stupid  and  cruel 
the  way  in  which  this  poor  creature's 
provocation  has  been  slurred  over.  The 
evidence  is  all  in  favor  of  her  continence. 
When  out  of  place  in  Paris  she  fell  in  debt 
directly  ;  a  plain  proof  labor  was  her  only 
way  of  getting  bread.  Here  in  London 
it  comes  out  that  her  wages  were  every- 
thing to  her.  She  wanted  to  go,  but  could 
not  for  want  of  a  little  money.  Why,  her 
very  strength,  about  which  so  much 
twaddle  was  been  uttered,  was  not  the 
strength  of  the  individual,  it  was  only  the 
strength  that  comes  to  women  of  her  age 
by  an  honorable,  laborious,  and  continent 
life.  And  is  it  a  small  thing  that  to  such 
a  woman,  working  in  her  kitchen  for  her 
bread,  another  woman,  whose  life  was  not 
laborious  and  honorable  like  hers,  should 
come  and  say,  You  are  a  prostitute. 
"Facile,  judicat  qui  pauca  considerat." 


344 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


We  must  consider  not  the  insult  only,  but 
the  quarter  whence  it  carae  ;  and  we  shall 
find  the  utmost  limits  of  verbal  provoca- 
tion have  been  reached  in  Diblanc's  case. 
The  time— Sunday  morning-,  when  the 
world  gets  peace,  and  even  cooks  hope  for 
it.  The  place — her  own  kitchen.  The  in- 
sult— the  most  intolerable  the  mind  can 
conceive;  and  a  lie.  The  result — honest 
labor  and  continence  used  none  of  the 
lethal  weapons  at  hand,  but  took  luxury 
and  foul-mouthed  slander  by  the  throat. 
Luxury's  arm  was  pithless  against  insulted 
labor  and  continence,  and  a  crime  was 
consummated,  when  between  two  work- 
ing women  there  would  only  have  been  a 
fight. 

It  is  the  misfortune  of  women  that  few- 
men,  except  one  or  two  writers  of  Bc1  ion. 
can  put  themselves  in  a  woman's  place, 
and  so  qualify  themselves  to  judge  her  in 
these  obscure  cases.  Bui  let  me  put  a 
man.  as  nearly  as  I  can.  in  this  woman's 
place.  A  man  is  with  his  wife,  whom  he 
loves  as  dearly  as  Diblanc  loves  herself. 
Another  man  comes  and  calls  thai  woman 
a  prostitute  to  her  face  and  his  ;  there's 
a  hatchet  on  one  side  of  the  husband,  a 
carving  knife  on  the  other.  The  husband 
takes  neither,  but  seizes  the  slanderer  b\ 
the  throat  and  squeezes  the  life  out  of 
him.  Would  that  man  be  indicted  for 
murder?  I  doubl  it.  Would  Baron 
Channell  ask  a  conviction  for  murder? 
I  doubt  it.  If  he  did,  no  jury  in  England 
would  convict.  Yet  here  the  provocation 
is  purely  verbal,  and  the  killing  identical 
with  Diblanc's. 

Let  me  now,  without  blaming  any  liv- 
ing person,  draw  the  attention  of  public 
men  to  the  stei-eolyped  trickery  and  equiv- 
ocation by  means  of  which  the  death  of 
Marguerite  Diblanc  has  been  compassed 
— in  theory  :  for  she  is  not  to  die,  I  con- 
clude. Some  lawyer,  in  the  name  of  a 
humane  sovereign,  draws  a  bloodthirsty, 
exaggerated  indictment,  and  says  Diblanc 
slew  Madame  Riel  willfully  and  with  mal- 
ice aforethought.  The  evidence  contra- 
dicts the  malice  and  the  aforethought, 
which  a,re  the  very  sting  of  the  indict- 
ment, and  the  jury  demur.  "Oh,  let 
that  flea  stick    in  the   wall/'   says   the 


judge,  "  we  don't  go  by  Johnson's  Dic- 
tionary here  ;  '  aforethought,'  that  means 
'contemporaneous'  in  our  vocabulary, 
and  'malice'  means  rage,  passion,  any- 
thing you  like — except  malice,  of  course. 
All  you  have  got  to  do  is  to  disregard 
the  terms  of  the  indictment,  and  if  she 
killed  the  woman  at  all  say  she  killed  her 
with  malice  aforethought."  The  jury, 
who  are  generally  novices  and  easi'y 
overcome  by  the  picture  of  a  gentleman 
thatched  with  horsehair,  assent  with  re- 
luctance, and  recommend  the  prisoner  to 
mercy,  thereby  giving  their  verdict  the 
lie:  for  if  the  indict  ment  was  not  an  im- 
pudent falsehood  and  their  verdict  an- 
other she  would  be  a  most  unfit  subject 
for  mercy.  This  bastard  verdict  which 
says  "  Yes  "  with  a  trumpet  and  "No" 
with  a  penny  whistle  being  obtained  by 
sion,  the  judge  goes  coolly  back 
to  Dr.  Johnson,  whom  lie  has  disowned 
for  a  time  in  order  to  get  a  verdict,  and 
condemns  the  woman  to  death  for  having 

killed  her  fellow-creature  wilh  malice 
aforethought,  as  Johnson  understands 
the  words.  But,  as  he  too  knows  it  is 
all  humbug,  and  a  verbal  swindle  in- 
vented by  dead  fools  and  forced  upon 
him,  he  takes  measures  to  refer  it  to  a 
layman  called  the  Some  Secretary,  who 
is  to  find  straightforwardness,  sense, 
manhood,  and.  above  all,  English  for  the 
whole  lot. 

Now,  sir,  I  agree  with  the  writer  of 
your  able  article  of  the  15th  of  June, 
that  the  way  out  of  this  is  to  enlarge, 
purify,  and  correct  the  legal  vocabulary. 
The  judges  are  in  a  hole.  With  two 
words — •"  manslaughter"  and  "  murder" 
— they  are  expected  to  do  the  work  of 
three  or  four  words ;  and  how  can  they? 
It  is  impossible.  Enlarge  this  vocabu- 
lary, and  the  most  salutary  consequences 
will  flow  in.  Sweep  away  "manslaugh- 
ter." which  is  an  idiotic  word  meaning 
more  than  murder  in  etymology,  and  less 
in  law.  and  divide  unlawful  killing  into 
three  heads — homicide,  willful  homicide, 
murder.  Then  let  it  be  enacted  that 
henceforward  it  shall  be  lawful  for  juries 
to  understand  all  words  used  in  indict- 
ments,   declarations,    pleadings,   etc.,   in 


READIANA. 


345 


their  plain  and  grammatical  sense,  and 
to  defy  all  other  interpretations  what- 
ever. Twelve  copies  of  every  indictment 
ought  to  be  in  the  jury  box,  and  every 
syllable  of  those  indictments  proved 
whether  bearing  on  fact  or  motive,  or 
else  the  prisoner  acquitted.  Neither  the 
Crown  nor  the  private  suitor  should  be 
allowed  to  exaggerate  without  smarting 
for  it  in  the  verdict,  just  as  in  the  world 
overloaded  invective  recoils  upon  the 
shooter. 

I  am,  sir, 

Yours  faithfully, 

Charles  Reade. 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford, 
June  11th,  1872. 


COLONEL  BAKER'S  SENTENCE. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — A  great  many  journals  and  week- 
lies have  told  the  public  that  an  English 
judge  has  passed  too  lenient  a  sentence 
on  Colonel  Baker  because  he  belongs  to 
the  upper  classes.  Some  have  added  that 
the  same  judge  had  inflicted  a  severe 
sentence  on  certain  gas  stokers,  and 
so  we  have  a  partial  judge  upon 
the  Bench.  This  is  a  grave  conclusion, 
and,  if  true,  would  be  deplorable.  You 
would  yourself  regret  it,  and  therefore 
will,  I  am  sure,  permit  me  to  show  you, 
by  hard  facts,  that  all  this  is  not  only 
untrue,  but  the  exact  opposite  of  the 
truth  in  every  particular.  Fact  1.  The 
proceedings  against  Baker  commenced 
with  an  application  for  delay  and  a 
special  jury.  Here  was  an  opportunity 
to  favor  him.  The  judge  rejected  the 
application,  and  he  was  tried  by  a  com- 
mon jury.  2.  On  the  trial  the  prosecut- 
ing counsel  attacked  him  with  a  severity 
that  is  now  unusual,  and  used  a  false 
comparison  to  lead  the  jury  further  than 
the  evidence  warranted.  3.  In  contrast 
to  this,  Baker  was  defended  with  strict 
moderation.  In  France  the  accused 
speaks    as   well    as   his   counsel,  but    in 


England  his  own  mouth  is  closed,  and 
we  must  assume  instructions  and  give 
him  the  credit  or  discredit  due  to  his  line 
of  defense.  Now,  there  was  a  point  in 
the  plaintiff's  evidence  which  to  my  mind 
is  womanly  and  charming,  but  still,  be- 
fore a  common  jury,  Mr.  Hawkins  could 
have  clone  almost  what  he  liked  with  it. 
It  appeared  that  when  the  young  lady 
was  on  the  doorstep  she  told  her  assail- 
ant he  must  hold  her  or  she  would  fall. 
They  little  know  the  power  of  counsel 
who  doubt  that,  hj  a  series  of  sly  ironi- 
cal questions  on  this  point,  the  case  could 
have  been  weakened  by  ridicule,  and  the 
plaintiff  tortured.  Since  the  lower  orders 
have  been  dragged  into  this,  it  should  be 
considered  that  every  one  of  them  would 
have  so  defended  himself,  except  those 
who  had  got  rid  of  the  case  before  by 
shoving  the  girl  off  the  step  instead  of 
holding  her.  "  That  is  the  sort  of  men 
they  are."  My  brilliant  contemporaries 
know  nothing  about  them.  How  should 
they,  being-  in  an  exalted  sphere  ?  4. 
The  common  jury  cleared  him  of  a 
criminal  assault,  and  found  him  guilty  of 
an  indecent  assault.  My  brilliant  contem- 
poraries hanker  after  the  higher  issue, 
and  would  like  to  see  it  in  the  judgment, 
though  it  was  not  in  the  verdict.  But 
that  would  be  to  juggle  with  the  con- 
stitutional tribunal,  and  be  inexcusable 
in  a  judge.  5.  Mr.  Justice  Brett  dwelt 
on  the  enormity  of  the  offense,  and  ad- 
mitted only  one  palliating  circumstance 
— viz.,  that  the  culprit,  when  he  found 
the  lady  would  risk  her  life  sooner 
than  be  insulted,  came  to  his  senses,  and 
showed  a  tardy  compunction.  This  was 
so;  and  Colonel  Baker's  line  of  defense 
before  the  magistrates  and  before  the 
court  entitled  him  to  this  small  pallia- 
tion. 6.  Witnesses  were  called  to  charac- 
ter, with  a  view  to  mitigating  punishment. 
Now,  when  a  culprit  of  the  lower  orders 
can  do  this  effectually,  it  always  reduces 
punishment — sometimes  one-half,  or  more. 
Were  it  to  go  for  nothing  where  a  gentle- 
man has  committed  his  first  public  crime, 
there  would  be  gross  partiality  in  favor 
of  the  lower  orders,  and  an  utter  de- 
fiance of  precedent.     7.  The  punishment 


346 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


inflicted  was  a  fine,  £500,  and  a  year's 
imprisonment  as  a  first-class  misdemean- 
ant. My  brilliant  contemporaries  think 
that  a  poor  man  would  have  been  much 
worse  punished.  Now  let  us  understand 
one  another.  Do  they  mean  a  pool1  man 
who  had  so  assaulted  a  lady,  or  a  poor 
man  who  had  so  assaulted  a  poor  woman  ? 
Their  language  only  fits  the  latter  view. 
Very  well,  then.  My  brilliant  contempo- 
raries have  eaten  the  insane  root  that 
takes  the  reason  prisoner.  Every  day 
in  the  year  men  of  the  lower  orders  com- 
mit two  thousand  such  assaults  upon 
women  of  the  lower  orders,  and  it  is  so 
little  thought  of  that  the  culprits  are 
rarely  brought  to  justice  at  all.  When 
they  are,  it  is  a  police  magistrate,  and 
not  a  jury,  the  women  apply  to.  It  is 
dealt  with  on  the  spot  by  a  small  fine 
or  a  very  short  imprisonment.  Colonel 
Baker,  had  lie  been  a  navvy,  would 
have  got  one  month.  My  brilliant  con- 
temporaries go  to  their  imagination  for 
their  facts.  1.  poor  drudge,  go  to  one  out 
of  twenty  folio  notebooks  in  which  1  have 
entered,  alphabetically,  the  curious  facts 
of  the  day  for  many  a  year.  The  fines 
for  indecent  assaults  range  from  five 
pounds  to  twenty.  Among  the  exam- 
ples is  one  that  goes  far  beyond  Maker's 
case,  for  the  culprit  had  recourse  to 
choloroform.  I  call  this  a  criminal  as- 
sault. The  magistrate,  however,  had  a 
doubt,  and  admitted  the  culprit  to  bail. 
At  the  expiration  of  the  bail  the  Lucre- 
tia  in  humble  life  walked  into  the  court 
on  Tarquin's  arm,  and  begged  to  with- 
draw the  plaint.  She  had  married  him 
in  that  brief  interval.  And  that,  oh,  too 
imaginative  contemporaries,  "  is  the  sort 
of  women  they  are."  The  magistrate 
scolded  them  both,  and  said  it  was  col- 
lusion to  defeat  the  law.  He  lacked 
humor,  poor  man.  When  a  lady  or  a 
gentleman  is  one  of  the  parties,  that 
immediately  elevates  the  offense.  I 
have  a  case  in  my  list  that  resembles 
Baker's  in  some  respects.  It  was  a 
railway  case — the  offender  a  gentleman, 
the  plaintiff  a  respectable  milliner.  This 
was  dealt  with  at  quarter  sessions;  fine 
£200,  no  imprisonment.     In  Craft's  case 


the  parties  were  reversed.  Craft,  a  car- 
penter, at  Farringdon,  kissed  by  force 
the  daughter  of  a  neighboring  clergy- 
man. She  took  him  before  a  jury,  and 
he  got  six  months.  But  her  majesty  re- 
mitted three  months  of  this  sentence. 

I  am  informed  there  was  a  case  the 
other  day,  and  a  bad  one — punishment 
two  months.  But  I  will  not  be  sure, 
for  I  have  not  seen  it.  Of  this  I  am  ab- 
solutely sure,  that  Baker's  sentence  is 
severe  beyond  all  precedent.  His  fine  is 
more  than  double  the  highest  previous 
fine.  His  imprisonment,  if  not  short- 
ened, will  be  four  times  the  term  of 
,  ami  about  twelve  times  what, 
if  the  female  had  been  in  humble  life,  a 
blackguard  by  descent  and  inheritance 
would  have  got,  and  he  is  both  lined  and 
imprisoned.  I  think  it  most  proper  a 
gentleman  should  he  mure  severely  pun- 
ished for  so  heinous  an  offense.  But  it  is 
not  proper  that  facts  should  lie  turned 
clean  topsy-turvy,  and  the  public  hum- 
bugged  into  believing  that  the  lower  order 
of  people  are  treated  more  severely  in  such 
cases,    when,    on    the    contrary,    they  are 

treated  with  gross  partiality;  still  less 
is  it  proper  , that  these  prodigious  errors 

of  fact  should  be  used  to  cast,  a  slur 
upon  the  just  reputation  of  a  very  sa- 
gacious, careful,  and  independent  judge. 
To  drair  the  gas  stokers' case  into  this 
question  is  monstrous.  Law  has  many 
branches,  and  a  somewhat  arbitrary 
scale  of  punishments  that  binds  the 
judges  more  or  less.  As  a  rule  it  treats 
offenses  against  the  person  more  lightly 
than  offenses  against  property — ay,  even 
when  marks  of  injury  have  been  left  upon 
the  person  for  months.  Now,  the  law  of 
England  abhors  conspiracy,  and  Mr.  Jus- 
tice Brett  found  the  law  ;  he  did  not 
make  it,  nor  yet  did  his  grandfather. 
The  gas  stokers'  sentence  had  nothing  on 
earth  to  do  with  their  birth  and  parent- 
age. They  were  representative  men — the 
ring-leaders  of  a  great  conspiracy,  and 
the  only  offenders  nailed  in  a  case  where 
our  jails  ought  to  have  been  filled  with 
the  blackguards.  It  was  a  heartless, 
egotistical,  and  brutal  conspiracy ;  its 
object  a  fraud,  and  its  instrument  a  pub- 


READIANA. 


347 


lie  calamity.  The  associated  egotists 
inflicted  darkness  on  a  great  city  during' 
the  hours  of  traffic.  They  not  only  in- 
commoded a  vast  public  cruelly  ;  they 
also  added  to  the  perils  of  the  city, 
and  most  likely  injured  life  and  limb. 
The  judge  who  punished  these  delib- 
erate and  combined  criminals  severely 
was  the  mouth-piece  of  an  offended  and 
injured  public,  and  not  of  any  clique 
whatever ;  for  no  clique  monopolizes 
light  nor  can  do  without  it,  least  of  all 
the  poor.  He  gave  his  reasons  at  the 
time,  and  the  press  approved  them,  as 
anybody  can  see  by  turning  to  the 
files.  To  these  facts,  sir,  I  beg  to  add 
a  grain  of  common  sense.  What  is 
there  in  a  British  colonel  to  dazzle  a 
British  judge  ?  The  judge  is  a  much 
greater  man  in  society  and  in  the  coun- 
try; and  in  court  he  is  above  the 
princes  of  the  blood,  for  he  represents 
the  person  and  wields  the  power  of  the 
sovereign.  Class  distinctions  do  not 
much  affect  the  judges  of  our  daj*. 
They  sit  too  high  above  all  classes. 
One  or  two  of  them,  I  see,  share  the 
universal  foible,  and  truckle  a  little  to 
the  press.  If  a  modern  judge  is  above 
that  universal  weakness,  he  is  above 
everything  but  his  conscience  and  his 
God.  Perhaps  my  brilliant  contempo- 
raries have  observed  that  solitary  foible 
in  our  judges,  and  are  resolved  that 
Mr.  Justice  Brett  shall  not  overrate 
their  ability  to  gauge  his  intellects  or 
his  character.  If  that  was  their  object, 
they  have  written  well. 

Charles  Reade. 

August  mil,  1875. 


PROTEST    AGAINST    THE     MUR- 
DER   AT    LEWES    JAIL. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Daily  News." 

Sir — I  claim  the  right  of  a  good  citizen 
to  disown,  before  God  and  man,  a  wicked 
and  insane  act  just    committed    in    the 


name  of  the  country,  and  therefore  in 
mine,  unless  I  publicly  dissent. 

An  Englishman  named  Murdock  was 
killed  yesterday  at  Lewes  by  the  minis- 
ters of  the  law,  for  a  crime  the  law  of 
England  does  not  visit  with  death.  The 
crime  was  manslaughter.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible that  even  an  English  judge  could  so 
mistake  the  law  as  really  to  take  the 
man's  crime  for  murder.  It  was  desti- 
tute, not  of  one,  two,  or  three,  but  of  all 
the  features  that  the  law  requires  in 
murder.  On  the  other  hand,  it  had  all 
the  features  that  distinguish  manslaugh- 
ter. There  was  no  murderous  weapon — 
there  was  no  weapon  at  all;  no  premedi- 
tation, no  personal  malice.  The  act  was 
done  in  the  confusion,  hurry,  and  agita- 
tion of  a  struggle,  and  that  struggle  was 
commenced,  not  by  the  homicide  but  the 
victim.  . 

As  respects  the  animus  at  the  time,  it 
is  clear  the  violence  was  done  alio  intui- 
tu;  the  prisoner  was  fighting,  not  to  kill 
but  to  escape ;  and  that  he  never  from 
first  to  last  aimed  at  killing  appeared 
further  by  his  remaining  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  his  surprise  and  ignorance  of 
his  victim's  death.  In  a  word,  it  was 
manslaughter  in  its  mildest  form.  I 
have  seen  a  boy  of  eighteen  hanged  for 
stealing  a  horse.  It  was  a  barbarous  act, 
but  it  was  the  law.  I  have  seen  a  forger 
hanged.  It  was  cruel,  but  it  was  the 
law.  But  now,  for  the  first  time  (while 
murderers  are  constantly  escaping  the 
law),  I  have  seen  an  English  head  fall 
by  the  executioner  in  defiance  of  the  law. 
I  wash  this  man's  blood  from  my  hands, 
and  from  my  honorable  name.  I  disown 
that  illegal  act,  and  the  public  will  follow 
me.  I  cannot  say  to-day  where  the  blame 
lies,  and  in  what  proportions ;  but  I  will 
certainly  find  out ;  and  as  certainly  all 
those  concerned  in  it  populo  responde- 
bunt  et  mihi.  Charles  Reade. 


348 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


STARVATION  REFUSING  PLENTY. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — The  journals  recorded  last  week 
the  death  by  starvation  of  a  respectable 
seamstress.  Now,  the  death  by  starva- 
tion of  a  single  young  working-  woman  is 
a  blot  upon  civilization  and  a  disgrace  to 
humanity.  It  implies  also  great  misery 
and  much  demi-starvation  in  the  class 
that  furnishes  tin'  extreme  example.  The 
details  in  this  case  were  pitiable,  and 
there  were  some  comments  in  the  Daily 
Telegraph  well  adapted  to  make  men  feel 
and  think  even  if  they  never  knew  hunger 
personally.  They  have  set  me  thinking 
for  one,  and  I  beg  to  offer  my  thoughts. 
I  have  observed,  in  a  general  way,  thai 
the  world  is  full  of  live  counterparts,  by 
which  I  mean  people  thai  stand  m  need  t>f 
other  people,  who  stand  equally  in  need  ol 
them;  only  these  two  live  counterparts 
of  the  social  system  cannot  find  each 
other  out.  Distance  and  ignorance  keep 
them  apart.  Of  late  the  advertisement 
sheet  has  done  much  to  cure  that,  and  is 
an  incalculable  boon  to  mankind.  But  as 
there  are  counterpart  individuals.  so  t  here 
arc  counterpart  classes,  and  I  shall  ask 
your  assistance  to  bring  two  of  these 
classes  together  and  substitute  for  starva- 
tion repletion.  I  see  before  me,  say.  two 
thousand  honest,  virtuous,  industrious 
young  women,  working  hard  and  half 
starved  :  and  I  see  before  me  at  least 
twenty  thousand  other  women  holding 
out  plenty  in  both  hands,  and  that  plenty 
rejected  with  scorn  by  young  women  of 
very  little  merit,  or,  if  not  rejected,  in- 
cepted only  under  vexatious  and  galling 
conditions  imposed  by  the  persons  to  be 
benefited. 

Aid  me  then,  sir,  to  introduce  to  a 
starving  class  an  oppressed  and  insulted 
and  pillaged  class  which  offers  a  clean 
healthy  lodging  and  no  rent  to  pay, 
butcher's  meat  twice  a  day.  food  at  all 
hours,  tea.  beer,  and  from  £12  to  £18  a 
year  pocket-money,  in  return  for  a  few 
hours  of  healthy  service  per  day.  To 
speak  more  plainly,  domestic  servants 
have  become    rare,  owing  to   wholesale 


and  most  injudicious  exportation ;  and 
although  their  incapacity  in  their  business 
has  greatly  increased— especially  the  in- 
capacity of  cooks — they  impose  not  only 
higher  wages,  but  intolerable  conditions. 
The  way  the  modest  householder  is  ground 
down  by  these  young  ladies  is  a  grievance 
too  large  to  be  dealt  with  under  this  head, 
and  will  probably  lead  to  a  masters  and 
mistresses'  league.  Suffice  it  here  to  say 
that  full  forty  thousand  domestic  servants 
are  now  engaged  yearly  in  London  on 
written  characters,  and  thirty  thousand 
withoul  a  i  haracter ;  and  I  speak  within 
hounds  when  I  say  that  there  are  good 
places  by  the  dozen  open  to  any  respect- 
able seamstress.  There  are  mistresses 
by  the  thousand  who.  in  the  present 
dearth  of  -.oil  and  civil  servants,  would 
try  a  respectable  novice.  Arespectable 
seamstress  lias  always  half  a  character, 
for  she  is  trusted  with  materials  and  does 
no;  steal  them  ;  and  the  oppressed  mis- 
i  in  tii. est  ion  would  forgive  a  few 
faults  in  housework  at  first,  starting  in  a 
woman  who  could  compensate  them  by 
skill  with  the  needle — no  mean  addition 
to  a  servant's  value.  I  now  turn  to  the 
seamstresses.  Why  do  they  sit  hungry 
to  the  dullest  of  all  labor,  and  hold  aloof 
from  domestic  service,  at  a  time  when 
ladies  born  are  beginning  to  recognize 
how  much  better  off  is  the  rich  housemaid 
than  the  poor  lady  ?  I  suspect  the  seam- 
Stresses  are  deluded  by  two  words,  "  lib- 
erty "  and  "  wages."  They  think  a,  fe- 
male servant  hns  no  liberty,  and  that 
her  principal  remuneration,  also,  is  her 
••  wages." 

I  address   myself  to  these  two  errors. 

Owe  (<mv  5<tt«,  cot'  aiojp  c'Aeiieftwc.  Our     liberty      is 

resl  i  amed  by  other  means  than  bolts  and 
bars.  It  is  true  that  a  female  servant 
cannot  run  into  the  streets  whenever  she 
likes.  But  she  sometimes  goes  on  er- 
rands and  takes  her  time.  She  slips  out 
eternally,  and  gets  out  one  evening  at 
least  every  week.  Then,  as  to  wages,  the 
very  word  is  a  delusion  as  far  as  she  is 
concerned.  Her  wages  are  a  drop  in  the 
ocean  of  her  remuneration.  She  comes 
out  of  a  single  room,  where  she  piss  with 
her  relations,  and  she  receives  as  remun- 


READIANA. 


349 


eration  for  her  services  a  rice  clean  room 
all  to  herself,  the  market  price  of  which, 
and  the  actual  cost  to  her  employer,  is  at 
least  Gs.  per  week,  and  the  use  of  a  kitchen, 
and  in  some  cases  of  a  servants'  hall, 
which  is  worth  2s.  per  week,  and  the  run 
of  other  bright  and  healthy  rooms.  In  the 
crib  where  she  pigged  with  her  relations, 
she  often  had  a  bit  of  bacon  for  dinner, 
and  a  red  herring  for  supper.  In  the  pal- 
ace of  cleanliness  and  comfort  she  is  pro- 
moted to,  she  gets  at  least  four  meals  a 
clay,  and  butcher's  meat  at  two  of  them. 
This,  at  the  present  price  of  provisions,  is 
16s.  per  week,  which  is  more  than  an  ag- 
ricultural laborer  in  the  Southern  coun- 
ties receives  wherewith  to  keep  a  wife  and 
seven  children.  But,  besides  this,  she 
gets  a  shilling  a  week  for  beer,  and  from 
a  shilling  to  eighteen  pence  for  washing. 
Besides  all  this  she  has  from  twelve  to 
eighteen  pounds  in  hard  cash,  with  occa- 
sional presents  of  money  and  dress.  The 
wages  of  her  class  have  been  raised  when 
they  ought  to  have  been  lowered.  The 
mechanic's  wages  are  justly  raised,  be- 
cause the  value  of  money  depends  upon 
the  value  of  the  necessaries  of  life.  These 
have  risen,  and  therefore  money  has  sunk. 
But  that  rise  does  not  affect  the  female 
servants,  and  it  does  affect  those  who  feed 
them  like  fighting  cocks.  A  droller  piece 
of  logic  than  the  rise  of  fed  servants' 
pocket-money  because  unfed  servants' 
wages  are  raised,  I  never  encountered 
even  in  Anglo-Saxony.  However,  the  up- 
shot is  that  any  half-starved  seamstress 
who  will  read  this  crude  letter  of  mine, 
and  make  diligent  inquiries,  will  find  that 
I  am  right  in  the  main  ;  that  domestic 
servants  are  trampling  too  hard  upon  the 
people  who  are  called  their  masters  and 
mistresses;  and  that  three  thousand 
homes  are  open  to  a  young  woman  who 
can  prove  that  she  is  not  a  thief,  and  six 
thousand  hands  are  offering-  not  only 
plenty,  but  repletion,  and  liberal  pocket- 
money  to  boot.  The  pay  of  a  housemaid, 
in  rent,  fire,  food,  washing,  beer,  and 
pocket-money,  is  about  £70  a  year,  and 
this  hungry  seamstresses  can  obtain  if 
they  will  set  about  it,  and  without  any 
loss  of  dignity :  for,  as  a  rule,   servants 


nowadays  hold  their  heads  as  high  or  a 
little  higher  than  their  mistresses  do. 
I  am,  sir, 

Your  faithful  servant, 
Charles  Reade. 


OUTRAGES    ON    THE    JEWS     IN 
RUSSIA. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — I  am  one  of  the  many  persons 
who  are  moved  by  your  denunciation  of 
the  lawless  cruelties  perpetrated  on  the 
Jews  in  Russia,  and  the  apparent  conniv- 
ance or  apathy  of  the  varnished  savages 
who  misgovern  those  barbarians.  If  the 
latter  persist  in  that  course  and  so  make 
that  a  national  crime  which  might  other- 
wise remain  the  crime  of  numerous  indi- 
viduals, some  great  calamity  will  fall  on 
them,  or  history  is  a  blind  guide  ;  and  by 
the  same  rule  j*ou  give  friendly  advice 
when  you  urge  our  government  and  peo- 
ple to  protect  and  wash  their  hands  before 
God  and  man  of  this  terrible  crime.  I  fear 
howrever  that  a  mere  government  protest 
will  be  slighted  or  evaded  by  Russian 
mendacity.  Fortunately  our  nation  can 
speak  and  act  by  other  organs  besides 
our  government,  and  now  is  the  time  to 
show  ourselves  men,  and  men  whose 
hearts  are  horrified  at  the  cowardly 
cruelty  of  this  Tartar  tribe  to  God's 
ancient  people. 

Let  us  take  a  wide  view  of  this  situa- 
tion, since  it  is  so  great  and  so  new  in  our 
day ;  for  wholesale  persecution  of  the 
Jews  is  not  of  this  epoch,  but  "a  rever- 
sion "  to  the.  dark  ages.  One  of  the  signs 
that  distinguish  a  true  Christian  from  a 
sham  one  is  that  the  former  studies  the 
Greek  and  Hebrew  Scriptures  with  care 
and  reverence,  and  there  learns  the  debt 
his  heart,  soul,  and  understanding  owe  to 
historians,  poets,  philosophers,  prophets, 


350 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


preachers,  and  teachers,  some  writing- 
Greek,  some  Hebrew,  but  every  one  of 
them  Jews;  and  also  learns  to  pity  and 
respect  the  Jewish  nation,  though  under 
a  cloud,  and  to  hope  for  the  time  when 
they  will  resume  their  ancient  territory, 
which  is  so  evidently  kept  waiting  for 
them.  This,  the  hope  of  every  Chris- 
tian, is  the  burning  and  longing  desire  of 
many,  for  another  reason — because  the 
prophecies  we  receive,  though  obscure  in 
matters  of  detail,  are  clear  as  day  on  two 
points  :  That  the  Jews  are  to  repossess 
Palestine,  and,  indeed,  to  rule  from  Leba- 
non to  Euphrates;  and  that  this  event 
is  to  be  the  first  of  a  great  series  of 
changes,  leading  to  a  vast  improvemenl 
in  the  condition  of  poor  suffering  mankind 
and  of  creation  in  general.  Now  we  have 
here  in  prospect  a  glorious  event  as  sure 
as  that  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow.  The 
only  difference  is  that  the  sun  will  rise  at 
a  certain  hour,  and  the  Jews  will  occupy 
Syria  and  resume  their  national  glory  at 
an  uncertain  nay. 

No  doubt  it  is  the  foible  of  mankind  to 
assume  that  an  uncertain  date  must  be  a 
distant  one.  But  that  is  unreasonable. 
Surely  it  is  1he  duty  of  wise  ami  sober 
men  not  to  run  before  the  Almighty  in 
this  thing:  hut.  on  the  other  hand,  to 
watch  precursory  signs  and  lend  our  hum- 
ble co-operation,  should  so  great  a  priv- 
ilege be  accorded  tons.  This  sudden  per- 
secution of  the  Jews  in  the  very  nation 
where  they  are  most  numerous — may  it 
not  be  a  precursory  sun  and  a  reminder 
from  Providence  that  their  abiding  city- 
is  not  in  European  Tartary?  I  almost 
think  some  such  reminder  was  needed  ; 
for  when  I  was  a  boy  the  pious  Jews  still 
longed  for  the  Holy  Land.  They  prayed, 
like  Daniel,  with  their  windows  open  to- 
ward Jerusalem.  Yet,  now  that  the 
broken  and  impoverished  Saracen  would 
cede  them  territory  at  one-tenth  of  its 
agricultural  and  commercial  value,  a  cold 
indifference  seems  to  have  come  over 
them.  I  often  wonder  at  this  change  of 
sentiment  about  so  great  a  matter  and  in 
so  short  a  period,  comparatively  speaking, 
and  puzzle  myself  as  to  the  reason.  Two 
solutions   occur  to  me  :    1.  Dispersed  in 


various  nations,  whose  average  inhabit- 
ants are  inferior  in  intelligence  and  fore- 
thought to  themselves,  they  thrive  as  in- 
dividual aliens  more  than  they  may  think 
so  great  a  multitude  of  Jews  could  thrive 
in  a  land  of  their  own.  where  blockheads 
would  be  scarce.  2.  They  have  for  cent- 
uries contracted  their  abilities  to  a  limited 
number  of  peaceful  arts  and  trades  ;  they 
may  distrust  their  power  to  diversify 
their  abilities,  and  be  suddenly  a  complete 
nation,  with  soldiers,  sailors,  merchants, 
husbandmen,  as  well  as  financiers  and 
art  ists. 

If  I  should  happen  to  be  anywhere  near 
the  mark  in  these  suggestions,  let  me  of- 
fer- a  word  in  reply  to  both  objections. 
In  the  first  place,  they  both  prove  too 
much,  for  they  would  keep  the  Jews  dis- 
persed forever.  It  is  certain,  therefore, 
they  will  have  to  be  got  over  some  day, 
and  therefore  the  sooner  the  better.  As 
to  objection  one,  it  is  now  proved  that 
sojourning  among  inferior  nations  has 
more  drawbacks  than  living  at  home. 
True,  the  Russian  yokel  has  for  years  been 
selling  to  the  Jews  his  summer  labor  in 
winter,  and  at  a  heavy  discount.  But 
the  silly,  improvident  brute  has  turned 
like  a  wild  beast  upon  them,  and,  out- 
witted lawfully,  has  massacred  them  con- 
trary  to  law:  and  truly  Solomon  had 
warned  them  there  is  no  animal  more 
dangerous  than  a  fool  and  a  brute  beast 
without,  understanding.  Besides,  they 
need  not  evacuate  other  countries  in  a 
hurry  and  before  the  resources  of  their 
own  land  are  developed.  Dimidium  facti 
qui  bene  ccepit,  habet.  Palestine  can  be 
colonized  effectually  from  Russia  alone, 
where  there  are  3,000,000  Jews  trembling 
for  life  and  property  ;  and  the  rest  would 
follow.  As  to  the  second  objection,  His- 
tory is  a  looking-glass  at  our  backs. 
Turn  round  and  look  into  it  with  your 
head  as  well  as  j'our  eyes,  and  you  shall 
see  the  future.  Whatever  Jews  have 
done  Jews  may  do.  They  are  a  people 
of  genius,  and  genius  is  not  confined  by 
Nature,  but  by  will,  by  habit,  or  bjr  acci- 
dent. To  omit  to  try  is  not  to  fail.  What 
have  this  people  tried  heartily  and  failed 
in  ?      Warriors,   writers,   builders,    mer- 


READIANA. 


351 


chants,  law-givers,  husbandmen,  and  su- 
preme in  all ! 

When  they  will  consent  to  rise  to  their 
destiny  I  know  not,  but  this- 1  do  know, 
that,  whenever  they  do,  not  excessive 
calculations,  but  some  faith,  will  be  ex- 
pected from  them,  as  it  alwaj^s  has  been, 
as  a  condition  of  their  triumphs,  and  they 
will  prove  equal  to  the  occasion,  and  be 
great  in  the  arts  of  peace  and  war,  and 
their  enemies  melt  away  before  them  like 
snow  off  a  dyke.  Should  they  seem  to  re- 
quire help,  at  starting,  from  any  other 
nation,  blessed  will  be  the  nation  that 
proffers  it ;  and  the  nation  that  persecutes 
them  will  be  made  an  example  of  in  some 
way  or  other.  Therefore,  if  by  anj'  chance 
this  recent  outrage  should  decide  the  Jew- 
ish leaders  to  colonize  Palestine  from  Rus- 
sia, let  us  freely  offer  ships,  seamen, 
money — whatever  we  are  asked  for.  It 
will  be  a  better  national  investment  than 
Egyptian,  Brazilian,  or  Peruvian  bonds. 
Meantime,  I  implore  our  divines  to  sepa- 
rate themselves,  and  all  the  souls  under 
their  .charge,  in  all  the  churches  and 
chapels  of  the  land,  from  the  crime  of 
those  picture-worshiping  idolaters  and 
cowardly  murderers,  ~by  public  disavowal 
and  prayerful  humiliation,  since  the  mon- 
sters call  themselves  Christians. 
Yours  faithfully-, 

Charles  Reade. 
3  Blomfield  Villas,  Uxbridge  Road. 


PRIVATE    BILLS    AND   PUBLIC 
WRONGS. 

To  tue  Editor  of  the  "  Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — Not  being  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment, I  must  either  submit  in  silence  to 
a  bitter  wrong,  or  avert  it  by  publicity. 
The  matter  is  national.  Other  grave  in- 
terests are  at  stake  besides  my  own,  and 
unless  the  House  of  Commons  is  warned 
in  time  it  mav  be  ensnared  into  an  act  it 


would  look  back  upon  with  some  dismay. 
I  suppose  if  anybody  were  to  propose  in  a 
private  bill  to  do  away  with  the  House  of 
Lords,  or  repeal  the  whole  common  law, 
people  would  see  that  the  promoter  could 
not  be  allowed  to  enjoy  the  unfair  advan- 
tages of  a  private  bill  in  such  discussion. 
Yet  there  is  a  private  bill  which'  aims  at 
high  game  ;  for  it  proposes  to  unsettle 
the  property  of  the  nation,  and  make  it  all 
insecure  and  liable  to  surprises  and  night 
attacks  in  Parliament.  There  is  a  bill 
called  "Albert  Terrace  Improvement," 
which  proposes  to  rob  a  substantial  free- 
holder of  property  which  I  am  justified  in 
valuing  at  £120,000,  and  several  substan- 
tial leaseholders  who  have  laid  out  from 
£850  to  £4.600  a  piece,  and  most  of  them 
over  £2,000,  by  the  odious  and  oppressive 
measure  of  compulsory  purchase.  For 
certain  reasons,  which  I  will  explain 
should  it  ever  be  necessary,  the  freeholder 
would  never  get  under  that  system  one- 
third  of  the  value.  The  leaseholders'  case 
is  come.  They  could  not  get  their  real 
value,  and  they  live  in  the  houses,  and  no 
money  could  compensate  them,  because 
no  money  could  enable  them  to  get  houses 
like  these,  with  gardens  running  to  the 
wall  of  Hyde  Park.  Such  properties  are 
relics  of  the  past. 

The  bill  proposes  to  give  these  houses, 
gardens,  and  sites — not  to  the  public,  as 
Northumberland  House  was  given,  nor 
yet  by  voluntary  purchase — but  to  a  sin- 
gle individual,  who  wants  them  for  a 
building  speculation.  The  operation  com- 
menced thus  :  We  the  leaseholders  re- 
ceived visits,  not  from  road-makers,  nor 
peers  of  the  realm,  but  from  architects 
and  builders.  These  showed  us  plans 
of  enormous  houses  with  a  turret,  and 
sounded  us  as  to  our  willingness  to  turn  I 
out  of  our  sweet  rus  in  urbe — the  onhy 
one  left  in  the  hideous  monotony  of  ma- ' 
sonry.  We  objected,  as  we  have  done  to 
similar  attempts  before  now. 

Presently  out  comes  the  bill,  and  lo  ! 
our  architects  and  builders  have  melted 
away  before  the  eye  of  Parliament,  and 
no  projector  figures  in  the  bill,  but  a  road- 
maker  and  patriot  peer.  This  public 
benefactor  wants  to   make   a  new  road 


352 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


into  the  park  and  dedicate  it  to  the  pub- 
lie.  That  he  distinctly  advances  as  his 
main  object.  But  he  insinuates  that  he 
cannot  do  this  act  of  patriotism  without 
taking-  seven  of  his  neighbors'  houses, 
and  perhaps  more.  To  carry  out  this 
object,  a  gentleman  of  good  descent, 
who,  nevertheless,  is  in  the  House  of 
Lords  only  an  obscure  baron,  is  at  this 
moment  in  the  Commons  Emperor  Elect 
of  Knightsb ridge,  for  he  asks  from  that 
House  powers  so  unconstitutional  and 
ill-defined,  as  he  knows  from  history  the 
Commons  would  not  concede  to  his  sov- 
ereign. 

The  queen  has  a  park;  he  proposes  to 
hi-. 'ale  into  it.  The  State  lias  its  road- 
makers;  he  is  for  kicking  them  out  of 
their  business.  The  nation  values  almost 
beyond  everything  else  upon  God's  earth 
tin'  equal  security  of  property  in  the 
hands  of  Lords  and  Commons.  He  pro- 
poses to  trample  on  the  nation's  feeling. 
and  on  those  equal  rights  by  the  odious 
measure  of  compulsory  purchase.  To  be 
sure  he  puts  forward  what  he  calls  a  pub- 
lic object,  viz..  a  new  public  road  into  the 
park.  Now,  1  am  not  going  to  argue  the 
whole  case,  but  merely  to  give  Parliament 
the  means  of  arguing  it  soundly. 

1.  His  public  road  is  not  a  public  road, 
but  a  new  private  carriage  drive,  down 
which  the  public  would  not  be  allowed 
to  run  a  wheel ;  and  so  great  a  prefer- 
ence is  already  shown  for  private  car- 
riages in  the  park  and  its  entrances, 
that  to  open  a  new  drive,  and  not  a 
road,  to  traverse  the  park,  would  offend 
the  public  and  rouse  unpleasant  discus- 
sions. 

2.  This  "oligarch's  alley,"'  miscalled  in 
the  bill  a  public  road,  is  to  be  44  feet  wide. 
The  property  it  demands  in  the  bill  is  156 
feet  wide. 

3.  The  undertaker  or  his  associates, 
or  both,  are  possessed,  in  some  way,  of 
property  lying  between  Sloane  Street 
and  Hyde  Park ;  for  they  are  taking 
down  the  houses.  He  solicits  in  the  bill 
the  right  to  deviate.  He  can  deviate  into 
rectitude  and  buy  land  ;  he  need  not  devi- 
ate into  built  houses  and  misappropria- 
tion. 


There  are  many  other  public  objections 
to  his  "  oligarch's  alley,"  which  he  calls 
a  public  road.  But  those  I  leave  to  the 
House  of  Commons  ;  and  I  leave  to  that 
House  with  perfect  confidence  the  Albert 
Terrace  Spoliation  Bill,  divested  of  its 
plausible  pretext.  I  will  not  be  so  un- 
just to  the  Commons  and  their  history  as 
to  let  your  million  readers  suppose  that 
House  needs  to  be  exhorted  by  me  when 
private  cupidity  stands  nude  on  one  side 
and  the  constitutional  rights  of  English- 
men on  the  other. 

But  what  may  not  be  done  in  the  dark  ? 
When  private  bills  come  on  there  is  no- 
bod  \  in  t  be  House  but  the  personal  friends 
of  t  he  projectors.  A  job  of  this  kind  glides 
from  a  bill  into  an  Act  in  less  lime  than 
it  would  take  to  hatch  a  serpent .  and  the 
1  louse  becomes  the  eat  's-paw  of  a  tyranny 
tpiite  foreign  to  its  own  heart  and  prin- 
ciples. 

This  is  where  the  shoe  really  pinches. 
Only  a  few  members  have  time  or  inclina- 
tion to  attend  to  these  cursed  Little  pri- 
vate bills,  especially  when  tiny  are  up  to 
the  neck  iii  the  I  [  el  1 ,  'spon  t  —  a  tid  who  can 
blame  them  ? — and  so  a  very  little  varnish 
carries  them  through.  John  Milton  says 
truly  that  even  wisdom  has  its  blind 
side.  The  times  are  high-minded,  and 
tic  high-minded  are  unsuspicious;  and 
so,  "  At  Wisdom's  gate  Suspicion 
sleeps,  and  thinks  no  ill  where  no  ill 
seems." 

This  letter,  then,  is  written  partly  to 
warn  the  nation  that  its  rights  are  at 
stake,  but  still  more  to  warn  our  histori- 
cal champions  of  these  rights.  I  submit 
that,  without  a  primd  facie  case,  it  is  not 
fair  that  worthy,  well-affected  citizens. 
all  paying  taxes  to  the  State,  should  be 
juggled  in  a  private  bill  out  of  the  unre- 
mitting protection  of  the  State.  It  is 
even  hard,  and  very  hard,  we  should  be 
put  to  the  suspense,  anxiety,  and  expense 
of  fighting  such  a  bill  in  committee.  At 
present,  however,  all  I  ask  for  is  numbers. 
Oh !  do,  pray,  give  the  nation  and  us,  on 
Thursday  afternoon,  not  a  handful,  but  a 
House ;  and  let  the  nation  know  from 
high-minded  Tories  and  high-minded 
Liberals  whether  it  has   lost  the  love  of 


READIANA. 


353 


both,  and  lost  the  greatest  protector  of 
its  sacred  rights  it  has  ever  had. 

Charles  Reade. 
Naboth"s  Vineyard. 

February  5th. 


"A  TERRIBLE  TEMPTATION." 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Daily  Globe," Toronto. 

Sir — Three  columns  of  your  journal  have 
been  sent  me,  headed  "A  Terrible  Temp- 
tation," yet  mainly  devoted  to  reviving 
stale  misrepresentations  of  my  older 
works.  The  writer  even  goes  beyond  my 
original  detractors — most  of  them  now 
my  converts — for  he  slanders  the  char- 
acter and  sincerity  of  the  author;  and 
that  in  terms  so  defamatory,  and  so  evi- 
dently malicious,  that  I  could  sue  him,  or 
even  indict  him,  if  he  was  worth  it.  But 
I  know  by  experience  what  would  follow  : 
an  anonymous  slanderer  is  always  a 
coward  ;  he  would  run  away  and  hide  the 
moment  he  saw  the  dog-whip  of  the  law 
coming,  and  I  should  have  to  punish  some 
unguarded  editor,  publisher,  or  printer, 
less  criminal  than  the  real  culprit,  but 
more  of  a  man.  I  prefer,  therefore,  to 
deal  with  the  slanderer  as  I  may  ;  only  I 
expect  you,  who  have  published  the  poison, 
to  publish  the  antidote. 

The  anonymous  slanderer,  in  his  rifle- 
pit,  has  so  many  unfair  advantages  over 
the  more  manly  author,  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  expose  him  without  first  naming 
and  ticketing  his  habitual  blunders  and 
frauds.  This  necessity  compelled  me  long 
ago  to  invent  a  new  science.     I  call  it 

Literary  Zoology. 
Of  that  science  certain  terms  are  indis- 
pensable in  this  discussion  :  unfortunately 
they  are  new  to'  the  Canadian  public,  so  I 
must  explain  them. 

The  Criticaster, 
first  pinned  on   cork   by  me  in  1859.     A 
very  curious  little  animal,  with  singular 

Reade— Vol.  IX. 


traits ;  the  most  distinctive  is,  that  in 
literary  questions  easily  soluble  by  direct 
evidence  he  "flies  to  cant,  conjecture,  or 
"the  depths  of  his  inner  consciousness," 
and  that  means  "the  shadows  of  his 
ignorance."  He  is  a  medieval  reasoner, 
who  has  lived  over  into  the  nineteenth 
century  bjr  some  miracle,  but  no  more  be- 
longs to  it  than  the  Patagonian  does, 
with  his  implements  of  stone.  This  little 
creature's  mind  and  method  are  the  exact 
opposite  of  the  lawyer's,  the  naturalist's, 
and  the  critic's. 

The  Prurient  Prude. 

(First  introduced  by  me  to  the  American  public 
iu  1864.) 

This  is  a  lewd  hypocrite,  who  passes 
over  all  that  is  sweet,  and  pure,  and  inno- 
cent in  a  book,  with  genuine  disrelish,  and 
fixes  greedily  on  whatever  a  foul  mind 
can  misinterpret  or  exaggerate  into 
indecency.  He  makes  arbitrary  addi- 
tions to  the  author's  meaning,  and  so 
ekes  out  the  indelicacy  to  suit  his  own 
true  taste,  which  is  for  the  indelicate  ; 
this  done,  he  turns  round  upon  the  author, 
whom  he  has  defiled,  and  says,  "  You  are 
unclean."  And  so  the  poor  author  is. 
But  why?  A  lump  of  human  dirt  has 
been  sitting  on  him,  and  discoloring  him. 

The  Shah-Sample-Sw~indler. 

This  is  a  kind  of  vermin  that  works 
thus.  He  finds  an  objectionable  passage 
or  two  in  a  good  book,  or  a  borrowed  idea 
or  two  in  an  original  book.  He  quotes 
these  exceptional  flaws,  and  then  adds 
slyly,  "  And  this  is  the  character  of  all 
the  rest."  Here  a  little  bit  of  truth  is 
made  the  cover  to  an  enormous  lie  :  but, 
unfortunately  for  the  public,  the  bit  of 
truth  is  compact  and  visible,  the  huge  lie 
is  in  the  dark.  There  is  no  cure  to  the 
sham-sample-swindler  except  reading  the 
whole  book  ;  but  the  sham  sample  deters 
its  reader  from  reading  the  book.  Here, 
therefore,  we  have  an  impregnable  circle 
of  fraud.  The  sham-sample-swindle,  as 
applied  to  grain,  is  seldom  tried  by  farm- 
ers ;  their  morals  are  not  the  morals  of 
scribblers  :    God  forbid  they  ever  should 

"12 


354 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


be  !  It  was  once  tried  in  Reading  market, 
when  I  was  a  boy  ;  but  the  swindler  was 
flogged  out  of  the  market,  and  never 
dared  show  his  face  there  again  while  he 
lived.  Not  so  with  his  literary  brethren ; 
they  are  never  flogged,  never  hung,  never 
nailed  on  barn-doors.  Rarely  detected, 
never  effectually  exposed,  they  pursue, 
withoul  a  Mush,  or  a  single  throb  of  con- 
science, the  easiest,  surest,  neatest,  and 
meanest  swindle  in  creation. 

The  True  Anonymunchle. 

This  little  creature  must  not  be  con- 
founded  with  the  anonymous  writers, 
who  supply  narratives  of  currenl  events, 
and  discuss  public  measures  with  free- 
dom, but  deal  largely  in  generalities,  ami 
very  little  in  personalities.  Those  are 
the  working  bees  that  gather  honey  for 
the  public.  Reade's  anonymuncule  is  no 
greal  producer,  he  can  do  little  but  sting. 
He  is  nf  two  kinds— the  anonymous  let- 
ter-writer,    pes;     of     families:     and    the 

: tiymous    literary    detractor,    pest    of 

the  fine  arts.  Both  varieties  have  tins 
essential   trail    m  Common,   they  abuse  the 

and  1  he  obscurity  of  the  anony- 
mous. The  literary  anonymuncule  often 
abuses  it  doubly:  he  belies  his  superior 
in  one  organ  of  criticism,  then  flies  to  an- 
other, and  says  the  same  thing  in  other 
words.  Then  the  duped  public  believes 
that  two  disinterested  judges  have  con- 
demned its  favorite;  whereas  the  poor 
editors  are  only  a  couple  of  unguarded 
puppets,  pulled  by  one  unscrupulous 
anonymuncule  raging  with  literary  envy. 

I  make  no  apology  for  this  preface,  be- 
i1  is  of  general  utility:  all,  who 
study  it  with  a  little  care,  can  apply  it 
to  a  thousand  cases— past,  present,  and 
to  come — in  which  I  have  no  personal 
interes 

Xow  to  the  ephemeral  application  of 
these  immortal  truths.  I  am  a  popular 
author,  bearing  an  indifferent  character 
for  temper  and  moderation,  where  in- 
justice is  done  to  others,  or  even  to  my- 
self, but  a  high  character  for  sincerity  and 
humanity.  As  to  my  literary  fame,  it 
has  been  acquired  fairly,  as  my  very  ene- 
mies admit :   the  Press   has   never  been 


favorable  to  me,  nor  even  just ;  the  one 
incorruptible  judge  of  authors  has  used 
its  own  judgment,  and  gradually  ac- 
corded me  its  esteem,  I  might  say  its 
reverence.  Xow  comes  an  anonymuncule 
and  undertakes  to  prove  that  I  am  an 
immoral  writer,  an  indecent  writer,  a 
writer  by  the  foot  and  the  month,  a 
writer  on  a  false  system,  the  opposite  of 
Scott's  ami  Shakespeare's,  and  all  great 
masters;  aim.  above  all.  a  social  fire- 
brand,-and  a  public  criminal.  This  lat- 
ter phrase  the  anonymuncule  thinks  so 
appropriate,  so  decent,  and  so  humane. 
thai  he  repeats  it  with  evident  gusto  and 
self-satisfaction.  Xow  you  are  aware 
that  no  man  of  honor  ever  brings  such 
charges  against  a  gentleman  of  high 
repute,  without  some  slight  show  of  de- 
cent regret .  and  thai  none  but  a  low-born 
villain  equivocates,  exaggerates,  or  tam- 
pers in  any  way  with  tacts  advanced  to 
barge  of  public  crime.  Bear 
that  indisputable  position  in  mind,  while 
I  dissect   my  anonymuncule. 

lie  opens  Ins  libel  by  saying  that  1 
have  shocked  public  morality  ;  and  t  he 
follow  ing  are   his  main   proofs  : 

A. — I  have  made  a  brilliant  adventuress 
of  i  he  I  >emimonde  t  he  mosl  interesl  ing 
female  character,  if  not  technically  the 
heroine. 

B. — I  have  thrown   her  vulgarity  into 
ckground. 

C. — I    have     thrown    her    uiuieanness 
background,  and  praised  her  by 
faint  blame,  etc.,  etc. 

o  B.  It  is  a  direct  falsehood. 
How  dm"-  this  writer  know  that  Ethoda 
Somerset  was  vulgar  ?  He  knows  it  only 
from  me.  My  fearless  honesty  has  put 
an  oath  into  the  woman's  mouth,  and 
plenty  of  Billingsgate  beside.     Lie  1. 

C. — Behold  the  "  prurient  prude."  This 
word  •■  uncleanness."  applied  to  vice,  is 
one  of  his  sure  signs.  Illicit  connections 
are  vicious,  but  they  are  no  more  unclean 
than  matrimonial  connections.  To  apply 
a  term  which  is  nasty,  without  being 
strictly  appropriate,  betrays  to  a  philos- 
opher's eye  the  prurient  prude.  When- 
ever in  a  newspaper  you  see  the  word 
••filth"    applied    to    adultery    or    other 


READIANA. 


355 


frailty,  the  writer  is  a  lewd  hypocrite,  a 
prurient  prude.  Remember  that :  it  is 
well  worth  remembering-.  Divested  of 
that  false  and  repulsive  expression,  what 
does  this  charge  come  to  ?  That  I  have 
but  coldly  stated  the  illicit  connection 
between  Rhoda  Somerset  and  Sir  Charles 
Bassett ;  I  have  gratified  this  prurient 
prude's  real  taste  with  no  amorous  scenes, 
no  pictures  of  frailty  in  action.  This  is 
quite  true.  I  have  given  the  virtuous 
loves  of  Sir  Charles  and  Bella  Bruce  in 
full  detail,  to  gain  my  reader's  sympa- 
thy with  virtue  :  and  the  vicious  connec- 
tion I  have  coldly  stated,  like  a  chroni- 
cler. Mine  is  an  art  that  preaches  by 
pictures.  I  draw  the  illicit  love,  with 
decent  reserve;  I  paint  the  virtuous  love 
in  the  purest  and  sweetest  colors  I  can 
command.  Who  but  a  prurient  prude. 
with  no  relish  for  my  scenes  of  virtuous 
love,  would  distort  this  to  my  discredit  ? 

What  writer  has  ever  produced  seems 
purer  and  sweeter  than  the  innocent  loves 
of  Ruperta  and  Compton  Bassett  in 
this  book?  Yet  how  have  the  prurient 
prudes,  one  and  all,  received  t  hem  ? 
With  marked  distaste ;  they  call  the 
scenes  a  bore.  Poor  shallow  hypocrites  ! 
These  scenes  of  virgin  snow  are  incon- 
venient :  they  do  but  fidget  and  obstruct 
a  dirty  fellow  groping  the  soil  for  the 
thing  he  denounces  and  loves. 

Is  daylight  breaking  in  ? 

A. — This  is  a  double  falsehood.'  In  the 
first  place  I  have  made  Lady  Bassett  by 
far  the  most  interesting  character.  Were 
Rhoda  Somerset  cut  out,  the  deeper  in- 
terest 'would  still  remain,  and  the  story 
be  still  rather  a  strong  story.  In  the 
next  place,  Rhoda  Somerset  is  not  one 
character  all  through  the  book,  as  this 
anonymuncule  infers.  She  is  first  a  frail 
woman — then  a  penitent  woman.  Now 
it  is  only  in  the  latter  character  I  admit 
her  to  the  second  place  of  interest.  Even 
Ruperta  Bassett  is  more  interesting  than 
Somerset  impenitent.  Let  any  lover  of 
truth  studj-  the  book,  and  he  will  find 
that  no  sympathy  is  conceded  to  Somer- 
set until  her^  penitence  commences,  and 
that  the  sympathy  enlarges  as  the  wo- 
man gets  better  and  better.     Yet  here  is 


an  anonymuncule  who  utterly  ignores  a 
woman's  penitence  in  summing  up  her 
character.  Is  there  one  precedent  for 
this  reasoning  that  has  stood  the  test  of 
time  and  reason  ?  No  doubt  some  con- 
temporary females  and  contemporary  I 
criticasters  reviled  Mary  Magdalene  to 
her  dying  day,  and  said,  "  Once  a  harlot, 
always  a  harlot."  But  what  has  been 
the  verdict  of  posterity?  And  what,  in 
any  case,  is  the  verdict  of  posterity,  but 
the  verdict  that  contemporaries  might, 
and  ought  to,  have  arrived  at? 

If  fifteen  years'  penitence  are  to  go  for 
nothing,  in  summing  up  Rhoda  Somerset, 
for  how  much  less  than  nothing  ought 
ten  minutes'  penitence  to  count  for  in 
that  thief,  whom,  nevertheless,  a  vener- 
able Church  has  summed  up  a  saint  ? 

John  Bunyan  was  a  blaspheming  black- 
guard. He  repented,  and  wrote  a  novel 
that  has  done  more  g-ood  to  men's  souls 
than  most  sermons.  Would  this  anony- 
muncule sum  him  up  a  blaspheming  black- 
guard ? 

Kotzebue's  Mrs.  Hailer  is  an  adulteress 
less  excusable  than  Rhoda  Somerset,  a 
low  girl  with  mercenary  parents.  Do 
Mrs.  Haller's  years  of  penitence  go  for 
nothing?  Or  does  Kotzebue  being  dead, 
and  Reade  being  alive,  make  the  penitent 
adulteress  a  penitent,  and  the  penitent 
Anonyma  an  unmitigated  Anonyma  ? 
Yet,  divest  the  argument  of  this  idiotic 
blunder,  and  that  part  of  the  libel  falls 
to  earth. 

D. — He  says  I  have  made  Sir  Charles 
Bassett  the  model  man  of  the  book.  That 
is  untrue.  I  have  not  pretended  that  he 
was  ever  much  worse  than  many  other 
young  men  of  fortune  ;  but  I  have  openly 
disapproved  his  early  life — have  repre- 
sented him  as  heartily  regretting  it,  so 
soon  as  the  virtuous  love  dawned  on  him  ; 
and  yet  I  have  shown  some  consequences 
of  his  early  frailties  following  him  for 
years.  If  this  is  not  fiction  teaching 
morality  in  its  own  unobtrusive  way — 
what  is  ? 

E. — He  says  that  there  is  a  strain  of  the 
Somerset  through  the  whole  book,  and 
that  a  nurse  giving  suck  is  described 
more  sexually  than  it  ought  to  be.     This 


356 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


is  a  deliberate  falsehood.  That  great 
maternal  act  is  described,  not  sensually, 
but  poetically  ;  and  attention  is  fixed,  not 
on  that  which  the  prurient  prude  was 
itching:  for",  but  on  the  exquisite  expres- 
sion of  the  maternal  face  while  nursing- — 
a  poetical  beautj'  the  sculptors,  Chantrey 
and  all,  have  missed,  to  their  discredil  as 
artists. 

F. — He  says  Lady  Bassett  was  on  the 
brink  of  adultery.  This  is  another  delib- 
erate falsehood.  Mr.  Angelo  may  have 
been  in  danger ;  but  it  bakes  two  to  com- 
mit adultery  ;  and  it  is  clear  the  woman 
was  never  in  danger  for  a  moment. 

The  anonymuncule  then  proceeds  to  say 
that  1  have  given  a  true  picture;  thai  in 
England  the  "kept  mistress"  has  be- 
come an  institution:  that  Anonynia  did 
beckon  our  countesses  and  duchesses 
across  the  park,  and  they  followed  her, 
etc.:  in  short,  he  delivers  a  complete  de- 
fense of  the  man  he  has  just  slandered; 
for  vices  are  like  diseases— to  cure  them 
you  must  ventilate  them.  Well.  1  have 
vent  ilat ml  the  English  concubine  in  my 
way,  and  my  anonymuncule  has  slan- 
dered me,  and  imitated  me,  in  t  hi 
column  of  the  same  newspaper.  Having 
detected  himself  in  this  latter  act,  he 
catches  a  faint  glimpse  of  his  own  con- 
duct, drops  the  slanderer,  and  announces 
that  he  is  going  to  discourse  artistically. 
Well,  when  he  gets  out  of  slander  he  is 
like  a  lish  out  of  water:  I  wander  through 
a  waste  of  syllables,  hunting,  fishing,  and 
diving  for  an  idea:  and  at  last  1  deted 
the  head  of  an  idea  in  one  paragraph, 
and  the  tail  in  another— these  scribblers 
never  can  articulate  their  topics — and  I 
drag  its  disjuncta  membra  together 
"with  oxen  and  wainropes,"  and  so  get 
to  this — 

Whatever  a  publisher  publishes  from 
week  to  week,  the  author  must  have  so 
composed  :  ergo,  Mr.  Reade  writes  so 
many  feet  per  week,  and  that  makes  him 
a  crude  accumulator  of  nothings.  Now, 
where  did  he  get  his  major  premise  ? 
From  the  depths  of  his  inner  conscious- 
ness. If  he  knew  anything  about  au- 
thors, as  distinct  from  scribblers  and 
anonvmuncula,   he  would   be   aware  that 


we  never  write,  as  they  do.  from  hand  to 
mouth.  Between  the  publication  of  my 
last  novel  and  the  issue  of  the  first  weekly 
number  of  the  tale,  eleven  months  elapsed. 
The  depths  of  this  man's  inner  conscious- 
ness inform  him  that  I  did  not  write  one 
line  of  the  story  in  those  eleven  months. 
Well,  they  tell  him  a  lie,  for  I  wrote  it 
all — except  a  few  chapters — in  those 
eleven  months  :  and  it  was  all  written, 
copied,  and  corrected  before  the  Cana- 
dian  public   saw   the   first    line   of  it. 

He  now  carries  the  same  system,  the 
criticaster's,  into  a  matter  of  more  gen- 
eral importance.  He  says  thai  I  found 
my  fictions  on  fait,  and  so  tell  lies:  and 
that  the  chiefs  of  Fiction  did  not  found 
tiet  ions  on  fact,   and  so  told   only  truths. 

Now,  where  does  he  discover  that  the 
chiefs  of  Fiction  did  not  found  their  fig- 
ments upon  facts?  Where? — why.  in  that 
little  asylum  of  idiots,  the  depths  of  his 
inner  consciousness  !  It  could  be  proved  in 
a  court  of  law  that  Shakespeare  founded 
his  fictions  on  fact,  wherever  he  could  gel 
hold  of  fact.  Fact  is  that  writer's  idol. 
It  was  his  misfortune  to  live  in  an  age 
when  the  supplies  of  fact  were  miserably 
meager.  Could  he  be  resuscitated,  and  a 
copy  of  the  Toronto  Globe  handed  him  at 
the  edge  of  the  grave,  he  would  fall  on 
his  knees,  and  thank  God  for  that  mar- 
vel, a  newspaper,  and  for  the  rich  vein  of 
ore,  whose  value  to  the  theater  he  would 
soon  show  us,  to  our  utter  amazement. 
Living  in  that  barren  age,  he  did  his  best. 
He  ransacked  Belleforest,  Baker,  Hol- 
linshed,  for  facts.  He  transplanted 
•whole  passages  from  the  latter  bodily 
into  "  Macbeth,"  and  from  Plutarch 
into  his  "  Coriolanus."  His  historical 
dramas  are  crammed  with  facts,  or 
legends  he  believed  to  be  fact.  Wol- 
sey's  speech  interwoven  with  his  own 
— Fact :  Henry  the  Eighth's  interjections 
— Fact;  the  names  of  Pistol,  Bardolph, 
and  a  dozen  more — Fact  :  you  may  see 
them  on  the  court-rolls  of  Stratford-on- 
Avon  any  day  you  like.  His  Dogberry 
and  Verges  —  Fact — from  Cricklade  in 
Gloucestershire ;  his  charnel-house  in 
•'  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  —  Fact  —  from 
Stratford-on-Avon,     etc.      This     anony- 


READIANA. 


357 


muncule  can  put  some  limits  to  his  ig- 
norance in  twenty-four  hours,  by  read- 
ing- the  "  Prolegomena  "  to  Malone's 
edition,  and  a  few  of  the  notes.  Shake- 
speare habitually  interweaves  fact  with 
fiction;  so  this  anonymuncule  has  culled 
him  a  liar  !  As  for  Scott,  he  is  one  mass 
of  facts.  I  know  this  from  various 
sources — my  own  mediaeval  researches, 
Scott's  biography,  and  Scott's  own 
notes  to  his  own  works.  He  was  forty 
years  collecting  facts  before  he  wrote  a 
novel.  Pure  imagination  is  most  ardent 
in  youth;  why  then  did  he  not  pass  his 
youth  in  writing?  He  would,  if  he  had 
held  this  anonymuncule 's  theoiy.  He 
employed  that  imaginative  period  in  col- 
lecting facts  :  he  raked  the  Vale  of  Et- 
trick  for  facts:  he  ransacked  the  Advo- 
cates' Library  for  facts  ;  and  so  far  from 
disguising  his  method,  lie  has  revealed  it 
fully  in  his  notes.  His  ability  is  his  own, 
but  his  plan,  though  not  his  genius,  is 
mine.  Now  I  will  substitute  the  method 
of  the  critic  for  the  method  of  the  criti- 
caster and  sift  this  question  in  the  person 
of  a  single  artist.  Daniel  Defoe  wrote  a 
narrative  on  the  plan  this  anonymuncule 
praises,  and  says  it  never  leads  to  lying ; 
it  is  called  "The  Apparition  of  Mrs. 
Veal."  He  also  wrote  a  narrative  on  the 
method  I  have  adopted,  called  "  Robinson 
Crusoe."  Now,  the  private  history  of 
the  latter  composition  is  truly  instruc- 
tive. Daniel  Defoe  came  to  his  work 
armed  with  facts  from  three  main 
sources  :  1.  Facts  derived  in  conversa- 
tion from  Selkirk,  or  Selcraig,  who  spent 
some  months  in  London  on  his  way  to 
Largo,  and  was  what  we  now  call  a  lion  ; 
2.  The  admirable  narrative  of  Selkirk, 
by  Woodes  Rogers;  3.  Dampier's  Voy- 
ages, in  which  book,  and  not  in  his  im- 
agination, he  found  the  Mosquito  Indian 
Friday,  and  certain  moral  reflections  he 
has  put  into  Robinson  Crusoe's  mouth. 
With  these  good  hard  facts  he  wrote  a 
volume  beyond  praise.  His  rich  store- 
house of  rare  facts  exhausted,  he  still 
went  on — peopled  his  island,  and  produced 
a  mediocre  volume,  such  as  anybody  could 
write  in  his  age,  or  ours.  The  immortal 
volume    dragged    its    mediocre    brother 


about  with  it,  as  men  were  attached 
to  corpses  under  the  good  King  Mezen- 
tius.  The  book  was  so  great  a  success 
that  its  author  tried  my  anonymuncule's 
theory  :  he  took  the  field  armed  with  his 
imagination  only,  unadulterated  by  facts. 
What  was  the  result  ?  The  same  writer 
produced  another  "  Robinson  Crusoe," 
which  the  public  read  for  its  title,  and 
promptly  damned  upon  its  merits  :  it  has 
literally  disappeared  from  literature. 

"The  Apparition  of  Mrs.  Veal"  is 
written  on  a  plan  which,  according  to  my 
anonymuncule,  breeds  general  truths, 
and  no  lies.  What !  The  sham  certifi- 
cate of  the  magistrate,  and  the  sham 
apparition,  minutely  related  with  a  single 
dishonest  purpose,  to  trepan  the  public 
into  buying  the  dead  stock  of  •■ Drelin- 
court  on  Death" — these  are  not  lies? 
I  congratulate  him  on  both  branches  of 
his  theory. 

The  charge  of  public  criminality  my 
anonymuncule  rests  on  this — "  That  I 
went  upon  a  single  case  of  habitual 
cruelty,  and  traduced  a  whole  system 
and  all  the  officials,  and  did  all  I  could 
to  make  a  great  social  experiment  mis- 
carry." This  is  one  tissue  of  falsehoods. 
That  no  sanguinary  abuses  existed,  ex- 
cept in  one  jail,  is  a  lie.  The  ordinary 
Bluebooks,  written  with  rosewater,  to 
please  Colonel  Jebb  the  Jail  King,  re- 
vealed a  shocking  number  of  suicides, 
and  a  percentage  of  insanity,  which,  in 
a  place  where  the  average  rate  was  re- 
duced by  stoppage  of  spirituous  liquors, 
gave  me  just  alarm.  I  had  also  person- 
ally inspected  many  jails,  and  discovered 
terrible  things  :  a  cap  of  torture  and  in- 
fection in  one  northern  jail :  in  a  south- 
ern jail  the  prisoners  were  wakened 
several  times  at  night,  and  their  reason 
shaken  thereby.  In  another  jail  I  found 
an  old  man  sinking  visibly  to  his  grave 
under  the  system  ;  nobody  doubted  it, 
nobody  cared.  In  another,  the  chaplain, 
though  a  great  enthusiast,  let  out  that  a 
woman  had  been  put  into  the  "black 
hole  "  by  the  jailer,  against  his  advice, 
and  taken  out  a  lunatic,  and  was  still  a 
lunatic,  and  the  visiting  justices  had 
treated    the    case    with    levity.     Then  I 


358 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


studied  the  two  extraordinary  Blue- 
books,  viz.,  the  Royal  Commissioners'' 
Report  on  Birmingham  Jail,  and  also 
on  Leicester  Jail,  of  which  last  this 
impudent,  ignorant  person  has  evident- 
ly never  heard.  Then  I  conversed  with 
one  of  the  Royal  Commissioners,  and  he 
told  me  the  horrors  of  Leicester  Jail  had 
so  affected  one  of  the  Commissioners  that 
it  had  made  him  seriously  ill  for  in  ore 
than  a  month.  Enlightened  by  all  these 
studies,  and  being  also  a  man  qualified  to 
see  deeper  into  human  nature  than  the 
Jail  King,  or  any  of  his  military 
dinates,  I  did  what  the  anonymous 
had  done  on  a  vast,  scale  without  re- 
proach from  any  anonymuncule  :  I  struck 
in  defense  of  oul  r  iged  law  and 
outraged  humanity.  But  unlike  the 
Press,  to  whom  the  prison  ru 
unknown,  1  did  not  confound  the  sys- 
tem with  all  its  abuses j  on  the  con- 
trary, 1  conducted  the  case  thus:  I 
placed  before  the  reader  no1  ot 
ernmenl  official,  but  two  —  the  jailer 
and  the  chaplain:  the  jailer  eternally 
breaking  the  prison  rules,  and  the 
ii  eternally  appealing  to  the 
prison    rules. 

A1  last,  after  inflicting  many  miseries 
by  repeated  breaches  of  the  prison  rules, 
the  jailer  does  a  poor  boy  to  death  :  and 
thenlbring  in  a  third  government  offi- 
cial, who  dismisses  the  jailer.  Now, 
since  the  prison  rules  were  t lie  condi- 
tions of  the  national  experimi  .1 
ly  supported  the  national  experiment  in 
most  particulars.  1  admit  that,  in  two 
respects.  1  did  try  hard  to  modify  the  ex- 
periment :  I  urged  on  practical  men  its 
extreme  liability  to  abuse,  and  I  wrote 
down  the  crank,  and  gave  my  rea- 
sons. This  irritated  government  officials 
for  months:  but  at  last  they  saw  I 
was  right,  and  abolished  the  crank, 
which  was  a  truly  hellish  invention  to 
make  labor  contemptible  and  unremun- 
erative,  and  theft  eternal.  They  have 
since  conceded  to  me  other  points  I  had 
demanded  :  and.  in  virtue  of  these  im- 
provements, I  am,  on  a  small  scale,  a 
public  benefactor,  and  have  modified,  not 
disturbed,  the  national  experiment. 


Now  let  any  one  examine  the  files  of 
September,  1853,  and  see  what  an  on- 
slaught a  hundred  anonymous  writers 
made  on  the  jails.  How  is  it  that  not 
one  of  these  is  dubbed  a  national  male- 
factor ?  Simply,  because  my  anonymun- 
cule is  not  jealous  of  them.  They,  like 
me.  did  their  duty  to  the  nation:  they 
lashed  that  Birmingham  Hell,  which  dis- 
graced, not  England  only,  but  human 
nature,  and  eighteen  months  afterward 
they  lashed  the  English  judges  for  not 
-  a  propel'  punishment  on  the 
criminal  jailer.  These  men.  like  me, 
wrote  humanity,  philosophy,  sound  law, 
and  good  gospel,  in  a  ease  that  cried 
aloud   to  God  and   man  for  all   four.     To 

they  wrote    on    sand,  I    w  rot l 

brass.  But  those  immortal  things  are 
not  changed  by  sand  or  brass.  Whether 
you  print  them  didactically  or  dramatic- 
ally makes  no  moral  difference.  I  was  a 
national  benefactor,  one  of  many.  Le1 
me  go  with  the  rest,  undistinguished. 
Whoever  singles  me  out,  and  calls  one 
benefactor  a  aat  iona  I  criminal, 
is  a  liar  and  a  scoundrel.  I  beg  pardon. 
he  would  be,  if  he  was  a  man:  but  youi 
anonymuncule  is  not  a  man.  as  I  under- 
stand the  word — he  is  a  creature  with  no 
genuine  convictions  whatever.  He  will 
write  againsl  barbarity  in  prisons,  asy- 
lums, hospitals,    p  and    all  dark 

places:  and,  if  a  man  with  higher  powers 
writes  more  effectually  againsl  those  bar- 
barities, he  will  eat  his  own  words,  and 
defend  Hell.  There  are  several  anony- 
muncula  of  this  sorl  in  England,  who 
would  deny  their  God  on  the  spol  if 
they  caught  Mr.  Eteade  singing  a  hymn. 
1  begin  to  suspect  this  is  one  of  them 
strayed  into  an  honester  country,  and 
disgracing  it. 

His  objections  to  "Put  Yourself  in  His 
Place  "  are  a  tissue  of  lies.  He  says  I 
have  attacked  Trades  Unions.  A  direct 
falsehood.  I  have  distinctly  defended 
them,  and  do  defend  them. 

He  intimates  I  draw  a  vital  dist  i 
between  my  club  and  an  Union.     A  direct 
falsehood.      I  have  plainly  disowned  all 
such  distinctions. 

He  says  I  have  slurred  the  faults  of  the 


BEADIAXA. 


359 


masters.  A  lie.  I  have  detailed  and  de- 
nounced them  again  and  again. 

He  intimates  I  have  not  read  the  Blue- 
books  on  Mines  and  Factories.  A  mis- 
take. I  am  deeply  versed  in  them,  as  he 
will  And,  if  I  live. 

He  complains  that  I  have  not  taken 
into  account  the  diseases  and  short  lives 
of  the  Sheffield  cutlers.  A  falsehood.  I 
have  gone  more  rninutety  into  them  than 
any  living-  man  but  Dr.  Hall  ;  have 
pointed  out  the  remedies,  and  blamed  the 
masters  for  not  employing  their  superior 
intelligence  to  save  the.  men.  "You  call 
your  men  'Hands,'"'  say  I:  "learn  to 
see  they  are  men." 

Understand  me,  I  would  not  apply 
harsh  terms  to  my  anonymuncule,  if 
these  several  mistakes  were  advanced  in 
a  literary  notice.  But  the  whole  article 
is  an  indictment ;  and  in  an  indictment  a 
falsehood  is  a  lie.  He  has  either  been  to 
the  depths  of  his  inner  consciousness  to 
learn  the  contents  of  my  book,  or  else  he 
has  employed  another  anonymuncule,  or 
some  inaccurate  woman,  to  read  it  for 
him,  and  so  between  two  fools — you  know 
the  proverb.  "  Put  Yourself  in  His 
Place  "  is  at  issue  with  this  writer  on  one 
point  only.  I  am  not  so  sloppy-minded 
as  to  confound  the  Manchester  district 
with  the  town  of  Manchester.  That  dis- 
trict numbers  two  million  people,  is  in- 
fected with  trade  outrage,  is  losing  its 
sympathy  with  the  law  even  in  face  of 
murder,  and  is  ceasing  to  be  England. 
Nothing  is  more  shallow  than  the  frivol- 
ity with  which  Mr.  Harrison  and  other 
one-sided  men  dismiss  this  terrible  phe- 
nomenon as  exceptional.  He  wdio  has 
studied  human  nature  and  the  Bluebooks 
so  deeply  as  I  have,  and  searched  the 
provincial  journals,  knows  that  not  two 
but  forty  trades  have  committed  outrages, 
and  that  the  exceptional  ruffianism  of 
certain  Manchester  trades  is  not  a  gen- 
uine exception,  but  only  the  uneducated 
workman's  ruffianism  carried  fairly  out. 
That  the  Sheffield  outrages  were  stale 
when  I  wrote — is  a  lie.  They  have  never 
intermitted.  Bluebook  exposure  did  not 
affect  them  for  a  moment.  The  town 
turned   Roebuck  out  of   Parliament,  for 


not  burking  the  exposure  ;  and  went  on 
with  their  petards,  and  other  deadly 
practices  ;  see  the  journals  passim.  Last 
year  they  knocked  a  whole  row  of  non- 
union houses  to  pieces,  and  tried  to 
slaughter  the  inmates.  Were  the  mis- 
creants at  Thornclitfe  cutlers  ?  I  thought 
they  were  this  anonymuncule's  pets,  the 
miners.  The  fact  is  that  the  Union 
miners'  hands,  from  John  o'  Groat's  to 
Lizard  Point,  are  red  with  the  blood  of 
non-union  men.  In  the  United  States 
the  trades  are  alreadj7  steeped  in  hu- 
man blood.  Is  America  Sheffield,  or 
Mancliesi  er  ? 

The  masters  are  just  as  egotistical  as 
the  men  ;  but,  unlike  the  men,  they  have 
never  had  recourse  to  violence.  How 
long  will  that  last?  Does  this  dreamer 
imagine  that  capital  cannot  buy  fighting 
agents,  and  ten  thousand  Colt  revolvers, 
and  a  million  grapeshot ;  and  kill  lawless 
ruffians  by  the  hundred,  when  they  com- 
mit felony  by  the  hundred  ?  When  we 
come  to  this,  and  when  the  Unions  have 
upset  the  British  Constitution  through 
the  servility  of  the  Commons  and  the 
blindness  of  the  Peers,  let  it  be  remem- 
bered that  a  thinking  novelist,  a  lover  of 
his  kind,  encouraged  the  workmen  in  law- 
ful combination,  but  wrote  against  their 
beastly  ignorance  and  dirt,  and  their 
bloody  violence  and  foul  play.  In  such  a 
case  it  is  either  books  or  bayonets.  I 
have  tried  a  book.  Others  will  try 
bayonets,  and  anonymuncula  will  cry 
"Bravo!** — unless  they  catch  sight,  of 
a  popular  author  in  the  front  ranks. 

The  author  of  "Put  Yourself  in  His 
Place  "  is,  in  a  very  small  way,  a  public 
benefactor.  Whoever  calls  him  a  public 
criminal  is  a  liar  and  a  scoundrel. 

That  in  "Hard  Cash  "  I  painted  all 
asylums  as  abodes  of  cruelty — is  a  lie. 
One  of  my  asylums  is  governed  by  a  most 
humane  person,  though  crotchety.  The 
solitary  asylum  in  "A  Terrible  Tempta- 
tion "is  also  a  stronghold  of  humanity. 
Even  in  "Hard  Cash  "  the  only  cruel 
asylum  is  governed,  not  by  a  physician, 
but  a  pawnbroker.  As  to  the  abuses 
pointed  out  in  "Hard  Cash,"  they  really 
existed,  and  exist. 


360 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


Can  any  man  offer  a  fairer  test  of  a 
book's  veracity  than  I  did  ?  I  said,  in 
my  preface  to  "  Hard  Cash,"  that  the 
whole  thing  rested  on  a  mass  of  legal 
evidence — Bluebooks,  pamphlets,  news- 
papers, private  letters,  diaries  of  alleged 
lunatics,  reports  of  tried  cases.  I  offered, 
in  print,  to  show  these,  at  my  own  house, 
to  any  anonymous  writer  who  might  care 
to  profit  by  my  labor — the  labor  of  Her- 
cules. I  lived  eighty  yards  from  Pica- 
dilly.  a  great  fashionable  thoroughfare, 
down  which  many  of  these  gentry  pass 
every  fine  day.  How  many  do  you  sup- 
pose accepted  this  infallible  fcesl  of  men- 
dacity or  veracity  in  my  book  ? 

Not  one  ! 

Not  one  of  these  hypocrites,  who  pre- 
tend  to  love   truth,   would  walk 
yards  to    reap  a    whole  harvest    of  truth 
with  next  to  no  t  rouble. 

No,  t  hey  preferred  to  lie,  unshackled  by 
evidence,  and  to  accuse  me  of  being  a  Liar 
Like  t  hemsel 

This  aiiniix  muncule  lias  read  that 
printed  challenge,  and  knows  it  was 
shirked.  Yet  he  repeats  the  ■ 
porary  Lie — which  is  new  a  greater  Lie 
than  ever;  for  fresh  evidence  lias  poured 
in,  both  public  and  private.  A  gentleman 
in  Dublin  has  recently  been  incarcerated, 
on  certificates,  in  an  asylum  ;  has  gone  to 
the  court  with  a  habeas  corpus,  and  been 
at  once  pronounced  sane.  A  Manx  drunk- 
ard has  just  been  cajoled  into  Scotland, 
and  incarcerated,  on  a  medical  certificate, 
as  insane 

These  are  public  cases  :  so  is  Hall  v. 
.s<  m/ili .  w  liere  a  turbulent  and  drunk- 
en wife  bought  a  doctor,  and  incarcer- 
ated her  husband.  Husband  has  sued 
doctor,  and  got  damages.  Add  private 
cases.  A  tradesman  in  the  North  had  a 
pretty  wife.  She  went  to  a  magistrate, 
and  said  lie  was  mad  :  "And  do,  please, 
lock  him  up  for  me."  "  My  pretty  dear," 
says  the  magistrate,  "I  can't  do  that, 
unless  you  are  sure  he  is  mad."  "Mad 
as  a  March  hare  ! "'  replies  that  fair  and 
tender  spouse.  Thereupon  the  magistrate 
issues  his  warrant,  and  the  man  is  locked 
up.  He  was  no  more  insane  than  his 
neighbors.      He    got  his  discharge,  and 


came  to  me  directly.  I  employed  him  in 
several  matters. 

A  respectable  tradesman  in  Chelten- 
ham was  incarcerated  by  his  wife,  and 
kept  eleven  years,  while  she  maintained 
an  illicit  connection.  He  made  his  escape, 
and  came  to  me.  I  lent  him  a  solicitor, 
and  told  the  parties  interested  to  let 
him  alone.  They  have  never  laid  a  finger 
on  him  since.  The  man  is  perfectly  sane, 
and  always  was. 

At  Hanwell  Asylum  alone  the  keepers 
have  murdered  three  lunatics,  by  break- 
ing from  eigtrl  to  ten  ribs,  and  the  breast- 
bone. The  doctor,  in  every  case,  has 
told  the  coroner  that  the  science  he  pro- 
fesses does  net  enable  him  to  say  posi- 
tively  that  till  these  ribs  were  not  broken 
by  t  he  man  slipping  down  in  a  room  :  and 
1  say  that.  H'  medicine  was  a  science,  it 
would  possess  the  statistics  of  falls; 
-i  atistics  are  at  present  confined  to 
my  notebooks,  and  these  reveal,  that  in 
mere  tumbles,  men  break  the  projecting 
belies  before  they  bivak  the  rilis:  and 
that  during  the  Lasl  twenty  years  only 
one  man  has  broken  so  many  a-  four  of 
his  own  ribs,  and  heft  ll  VZOfeet. 

I  told  the  public,  in  the  I'ull  Mall 
(iir.iflc  the  precise  i le  in  which  luna- 
tics are  murdered  at  Hanwell — viz.,  by 
the  keepers  walking  up  and  down  the 
victim  on  their  knees,  and  pressing  on 
him  with  then-  knees.  A  month  later. 
two  keepers  were  indicted  for  killing  a 
man  in  Lancaster  Asylum.  The  doctors 
puzzled  a  bit  over  his  broken  ribs,  and 
conjectured  that  nine  ribs  were  broken  by 
pressure  on  the  breast-bone:  which  is 
simply  idiotic,  as  will  be  found  by  experi- 
ment on  a  skeleton.  A  wi1  ms>  went  into 
the  box.  ami  swore  he  had  seen  the  man 
murdered  by  repeated  blows  of  the 
keepers'  knees.  For  once,  thank  God, 
we  nailed  these  miscreants,  and  they  got 
seven  years'  penal  servitude. 

The  author  of  "  Hard  Cash  "  is  a  pub- 
lic benefactor,  in  a  small  way.  Whoever, 
after  this,  calls  him  a  public  criminal,  is 
a  liar  and  a  scoundrel. 

The  last  charge  is  trifling.  Here  is  an 
ill-natured  egotist  accusing  me  of  good- 
natured    egotism.      The    charge,    made 


READIANA. 


361 


with  moderation,  might  perhaps  have 
been  sustained  ;  but  his  malice  and  men- 
dacity have  overshot  the  mark,  and  given 
me  a  right  to  correct  him. 

He  begins  with  the  Sham-Sample- 
Swindle.  He  cites  a  single  passage  from 
my  letter  to  Bushnan.  That  passage,  so 
taken,  is  egotistical,  but  not  if  you  con- 
sider the  context  and  its  purpose.  Bush- 
nan  was  a  humbug,  who  wrote  at  me  pub- 
licly, and  said  there  were  no  abuses  in 
asyla.  You  will  smile,  perhaps,  when  I 
tell  j'ou  that,  at  that  moment,  there 
were  abuses  in  his  own  asylum  so  serious, 
that,  very  soon  after,  he  was  turned  out 
of  it.  Well,  I  knocked  Bushnan  on  the 
head  with  a  lot  of  examples  this  anony- 
muncule  hasread  and  shirked,  the  better 
to  repeat  Bushnan 's  falsehood.  From 
that  list  of  facts  I  could  not  afford  to  ex- 
clude my  own  experience — it  was  too 
good  evidence  to  suppress.  Yes,  at  a 
time  when  my  income  was  not  large,  I 
did,  for  love  of  justice,  humanity,  and 
law,  protect  an  injured  fellow-citizen,  in 
whom  I  had  no  other  interest.  He  was  a 
sane  man,  unjustly  incarcerated.  1  fed 
him,  clothed  him,  backed  him,  and,  after 
a  bitter  and  costly  struggle,  got  him  an 
annuity  of  £100  a  year  for  life  from  those 
who  incarcerated  him.  Perhaps,  if  an 
anonymuncuie  were  capable  of  such  an 
action,  he  might  mention  it  spontaneously 
and  more  than  once.  It  was  dragged  out 
of  me  by  a  liar,  and  I  never  repeated  it 
in  my  own  person. 

For  an  author  to  introduce  his  own 
character  into  a  novel  looks  like  egotism  ; 
but  it  is  not  so  uncommon  as  this  illiter- 
ate person  imagines.  Eccentric  characters 
are  rare  and  valuable  to  the  artist ;  and 
this  eccentric  character  was  intruded  not 
egotistically  but  artistically.  It  fitted 
the  occasion  and  forced  itself  on  me. 

"Oh,  but,"  says  the  anonymuncuie, 
"  your  sketch  is  one  strain  of  eulogy  on 
the  person  and  mind  of  Rolfe."  Was 
ever  so  impudent  a  lie  as  this  ?  It  is  the 
exact  opposite  of  the  truth.  It  should  be 
remembered  that,  in  fiction,  I  am  not  a 
satirist ;  I  am  one  who  sees  the  bright 
side  of  a  mixed  character,  and  I  dare  say 
Rolfe  has  benefited  a  little  by  that,  along 


with  a  score  more  characters  that  I  have 
drawn.  But  compare  Rolfe  with  his  pred- 
ecessors in  his  own  line  of  business — with 
Mr.  Eden,  Dr.  Sampson,  Dr.  Amboyne. 
Have  I  ever  handled  him  with  the  rever- 
ence, the  affection,  the  gusto  I  have  shown 
them  ?  Have  I  disguised  his  foibles  ? 
Have  I  not  let  Dr.  Suaby  get  the  better 
of  him  in  dialogue  ?  Who  gets  the  better 
of  Eden  or  Amboyne  ? 

"  But,"'  says  my  anonymuncuie,  "you 
have  said  the  best  judges  adore  his  works. ' ' 
This  is  an  impudent  lie  ;  I  never  said  a 
syllable  of  the  kind. 

"  Personally  he  is  most  striking  and  in- 
teresting," etc.  This  whole  sentence  is  an 
impudent  lie.  I  have  described  the  man 
as  personally  uninteresting  and  common- 
place :  an  unwieldly  person,  a  rolling  gait, 
commonplace  features,  a  mild  brown  eye, 
not  bright.  I  have  told  the  truth  pro  and 
co)i.  just  as  I  should  of  anjT  other  person 
I  was  inspecting  with  an  artist's  eye. 

But  the  best  possible  answer  to  this 
falsehood  is  to  republish  the  comment  of 
an  American  critic,  that  has  come  to  me  : 
"  It  is  alleged  that  in  this  character 
Reade  has  intended  to  represent  himself, 
and  a  cry  of  horror  is  raised,  by  those 
who  have  never  read  '  Copperfield,'  '  Pen- 
dennis,'  or  'Amelia,'  and  never  seen 
Raphael's  portrait  of  himself.  We  are 
inclined  to  think  that  Rolfe  and  Reade 
are  one,  because  the  novels  of  the  latter 
could  scarcely  be  as  perfect  as  they  are, 
without  the  patient,  unremitting  drudg- 
ery ascribed  to  the  former,  and  also  be- 
cause the  character  is  drawn  in  a  pitiless 
fashion,  which  Reade  never  elsewhere 
employs  toward  his  virtuous  personages. 
The  plain  exterior  of  the  man,  and  his 
self-conceit,  all  his  foibles,  are  kept  per- 
sistently before  the  reader,  in  a  style 
which  seems  to  indicate  conscientious  self- 
analysis,  and  in  gratitude  for  the  picture 
we  fail  to  blame  the  artist." — The  Charles  - 
ton  Courier. 

One  of  these  writers  is  clearly  tamper- 
ing with  truth.  Let  the  book  itself  decide 
which. 

Two  virulent  critiques  on  my  work6,  in 
Canadian  papers,  end  rather  suspiciously 
with  the  same  suggestion.    This  indicates 


3»;2 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


the  same  hand,  and  is  an  abuse  of  the 
anonymous.  See  my  preliminary  remark 
in  voce  anonymuncule.  The  suggestion 
ot  which  the  anonymuncule  is  so  proud  is 
this,  that  Mr.  Rolfe,  previously  identified 
with  -Mr.  Reade,  may  perhaps  end  his 
days  in  a  madhouse. 

That  shall  be  as  God  pleases.  Ho  gave 
me  whatever  good  gifts  I  have,  my 
hatred  of  inhumanity  and  injustice  and 
my  loathing  of  everything  that  is  dastard- 
ly and  mean,  from  a  British  anonymuncule 
up  to  a  Carolina  skunk  ;  and  He  can  take 
these  gifts  away  in  a  moment,  by  taking 
my  reason. 

1  shall  be  no  nearer  thai  calamity  for 
this  writer's  suggestion,  and  he  will  be  no 
furl  her  oil  it .  since  such  suggestions  some- 
times offend  God,  as  well  as  disgust  men. 

But  this  is  certain  :  should  he  ever 
transplanl  into  any  business  Less  base  and 
belov  the  law's  lash  than  anonymous  de- 
traction, the  morals  and  practices  ho  has 
shown  in  slandering  me,  he  will,  soon  or 
late,  find  his  way,  not  to  an  asylum,  but 
a  jail 

Four  obedienl   servant, 

Charles  Reads. 

<  'ctober,  1871. 

This  letter  was  written  in  reply  to  a 
malicious  and  defamatory  libel  by  Mr. 
Q-oldwin  Smith  in  the  Toronto  Globe. 
The  character  of  that  libel  can  be  divined 
by  the  reply.  I  sent  it  to  the  Globe,  but. 
as  criticasters  dare  not  encounter  superior 
writers,  on  fair  terms,  il  was  suppressed. 

C.  R. 

Auytist  5,  1888. 


A  SUPPRESSED   LETTER. 

The  Athenceum  has  lately  published 
some  critiques  on  dramatic  authors,  sign- 
ed "Q.,"'  and  written  with  more  confi- 
dence than  knowledge.  The  article  on  Mr. 
Tom  Taylor  shocked  Mr.  Charles  Reade's 


sense  of  justice  and  propriety,  and  he 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Athe- 
nceum.  That  gentleman  suppressed  the 
letter.  Mr.  Reade  objects  to  this  as 
doubly  unfair,  and  requests  the  editor  of 
the  paper  to  which  this  is  sent  to  give  the 
letter,  and  its  suppression,  duo  publicity. 

To   the    Editor   of    the    "  Athen.eum." 

i  Albert  Terrace,  Kxiohtsbridge. 
AprilZ5th,  1871. 

Sir — An  article  appeared  in  last  week's 
Athenaeum  entitled  "Mr.  Tom  Taylor," 
and  written  by  one  "Q."  The  article  is 
unjust  and  needlessly  discourteous  to  a 
writer  of  merit,  and  I  must  appeal  to 
your  sense  of  jusl  ice  \<>  let  a  disinterested 
correel  your  "Q."  and  undeceive 
your  public. 

I  will  take  the  two  writers  in  their  in- 
I  i.al  order. 

Mr.  T<>m  T  wlor 

first  distinguished  himself  as  a.  scholar: 

a   fellowship  at  Trinity  College, 

Cambridge.       "Mutatis      Studiis"      he 

wrote  tor  the  theater;  and  his  early 
pieces  were  all  original,  though,  at 
that     time,    originality     was   rarer     than 

now.     Between  the  years  1852  and   L856 

I  had  myself  the  honor  of  working 
with  him  on  four  original  dramas.  I 
found  him  rich  in  knowledge,  ferule  m  in- 
vention, and   rapid  in    execution.     (  )|  late 

years  he   has  1 a   a   very   bus\   man  :   he 

is  the  head  of  a  public  office,  and  the  na- 
tion takes  the  cream  of  his  day:  he  is  a 
steady  contributor  to  the  Times  and  to 
Punch,  has  published  two  biographies  of 
great  research,  and  yet  lias  contrived  to 
write  many  good  dramas  in  prose  and 
verse.  The  mind  is  finite,  so  is  the  day  ; 
and  I  observe  that,  writing  for  the  stage 
in  the  mere  fragments  of  his  time,  he  now 
invents  less,  and  imitates  more,  than  lie 
did  some  years  ago.  But,  taking  his 
whole  career,  the  title  of  a  dramatic  in- 
ventor cannot  be  honestly  denied  him.  He 
may  not  be  a  dramatist  of  the  highest 
class — what  living  Englishman  is  ? — but 
he  resembles  the  very  highest  in  this,  t  hat 
he  sometimes  adapts  or  imitates,  without 


READIAXA. 


363 


servility,  and  sometimes  invents.  This 
accomplished  writer  in  so  many  styles  is 
the  only  man  who  of  late  years  has  filled 
a  theater  by  poetical  dramas.  His  last 
is  ■•  Joan  of  Arc." 

Is  not  this  a  remarkable  man,  as  times 
go,  and  entitled  to  decent  respect  from 
the  mere  shrimps  and  minnows,  who 
write  about  literature,  because  they  can- 
not write  literature? 

Mr.  Q. 

is  a  variety  of  the  literary  insect  "Criti- 
caster." He  has  been  good  enough  to 
reveal  his  method.  He  went  to  the 
Queen's  Theater  to  see  "  Joan  of  Arc," 
and  weigh  the  author's  lines,  and  the 
author  himself,  in  his  little  balance.  He 
qualified  himself  as  follows  :  he  turned 
his  back  on  the  stage,  and  fell  to  talking 
with  another  criticaster — the  illustrious 
P.  ? — about  other  plays  of  Mr.  Taylor. 
They  did  not  talk  improvingly,  for  they 
merely  played  off  a  stale  literary  fraud 
which  I  exposed  two  years  ago  under  the 
title  of  the  "'  Sham  Sample  Swindle."  For 
all  that,  this  part  of  Q.'s  narrative  is  in- 
teresting to  me  :  I  have  long  been  asking- 
myself  to  what  class  of  society,  and  to 
what  depths  of  the  human  intellect,  be- 
long those  chattering  snobs  who  always 
spoil  a  play  for  poor  me,  whenever  I  go 
to  the  public  part  of  a  theater. 

"  Revealed  the  secret  stands  of  Nature's  work." 

They  are  criticasters  ;  sent  in  there,  by 
too  confiding  editors,  to  hold  their  ton- 
gues, and  to  give  their  minds  to  the  play. 

At  the  last  scene  it  suddenly  occurred 
to  "Q."  that  he  must  not  go  away  know- 
ing nothing  of  the  play  he  was  sent  there 
to  know  all  about,  and  this  led  to  a 
dialogue  I  reproduce  verbatim,  simply 
remarking  that  to  me,  who  am  a  critic, 
it  reads   like  bad  fiction. 

"  'May  I  venture  to  ask,'  said  T.  '  if  you 
have  reason  to  suppose  that  the  drama 
we  are  now  witnessing  is  derived  from 
any  foreign  original  ?  '  My  friend  was 
expanding  his  crush-hat.  'Certainly 
not,'  he  replied  with  emphasis,  pointing 
to  the  stage,  whereon  they  were  roast- 
ing Mrs.    Rousbv :     '  I    know   no    other 


dramatic  author  who,  left  to  himself, 
would  conceive  the  notion  of  presenting 
before  an  audience  such  brutal  realism 
as  that.'     And  my  friend  left." 

Now  "P."  never  uttered  those  words. 
Every  nation  has  two  languages ;  the 
spoken,  and  the  written ;  so  uncouth 
and  involved  a  sentence  never  flowed 
from  a  bad  writer's  mouth,  it  could  only 
wriggle  from  a  bad  writer's  pen.  How- 
ever, there  it  is — a  monument  of  impu- 
dence, insolence,  and  ignorance.  What 
these  poor  gropers  in  the  back  slums  of 
the  drama  stigmatize  as  unprecedented 
realism  has  been  enacted  before  admiring 
Europe,  by  the  most  poetical  actress  of 
the  century,  in  1he  first  theater,  and  the 
most  squeamish,  of  the  civilized  world. 
'Joan  of  Arc  '  wTas  one  of  Rachel's  char- 
acters, and,  in  her  hands,  was  burned  to 
was  death  night  after  night.  The  burning 
represented  with  what  a  critic  would  call 
"terrible  fidelity,"  a  criticaster,  "  brutal 
realism."  She  stood  on  a  small  working- 
platform  arranged  to  fall  about  two  feet 
to  a  stop.  The  effect  was  truthful,  but 
appalling;  for,  when  the  fire  had  burned 
a  little  time,  the  great  actress,  who  did 
nothing  by  halves,  turned  rigid,  and 
seemed  to  fall  like  a  burned  log  from  her 
supports.  It  conveyed,  and  was  intended 
to  convey,  that  the  lower  extremities  had 
been  burned  away  and  the  figure  dropped 
into  the  flames.  Of  course  the  curtain 
fell  like  lightning  then,  and,  up  to  the 
moment  preceding  that  awful  incident, 
the  face  of  the  actress  shone  like  an 
angel's,  and  was  divine  with  the  triumph 
of  the  great  soul  over  the  very  flames 
that  were  destroying  the  mortal  body. 

Believe  me,  sir,  no  author.  French  or 
English,  can  give  this  actress  a  nobler 
opportunity  than  this  of  rising  to  the 
level  of  Poeti-y  and  History. 

As  to  the  notion  that  death  by  fire  is 
unfit  to  be  presented  coram  populo,  this 
is  the  chimera  of  a  few  Anglo  -  Saxon 
dunces,  afflicted  with  the  known  intel- 
lectual foible  of  their  race — the  trick  of 
drawing  distinctions  without  a  difference: 
in  other  words,  the  inability  to  general- 
ize. Death  by  fire  is  neither  more  nor 
less  fit  to   be  presented   faithfully  than 


364 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


death  by  poison,  or  cold  steel.  On\y  the 
death  of  "  Joan  a" Arc  "  by  fire,  with  her 
rapt  eyes  fixed  on  the  God  she  is  going; 
to,  is  of  a  grander  and  more  poetical  nat- 
ure than  the  death  of  "  Hamlet  "  or  of 
"Macbeth." 

That  the  performance  of  this  great 
scene  at  the  Queen's  Theater  sujs 
nothing  nobler  and  more  poetic  to  "P." 
and  •'  Q."  than  an  actress  roasted,  is  not 
the  faull  of  Mr.  Taylor,  nor  of  history, 
which  dictated  the  situation. 

No  Frenchman  was  ever  the  hog  to 
comment  on  the  same  situation  in  a  -mil- 
iar spirit,  and  I  am  therefore  driven  re- 
luctantly to  the  conclusion,  thai  the 
brutal  nation,  which  burned  the  maid 
of  <>rle;n!s.  i-  -nil.  in  some  respects,  al 
the  bottom  of  mankind. 

Of  course,  if   the  part  was  vilely  acted 

there    would     lie    some     excuse     fur    "   ['." 

and  "Q."'  But,  on  the  contrary.  1  he  r 
,l  is  well  acted.  Tin'  fault  then  lies  with 
the  criticasters.  It  is  the  old,  "Id  ston  : 
Parvis  omnia  parva.  When  little  men. 
with  little  heads,  little  hearts,  HI  tie  knowl- 
edge, little  sensibility,  and  greal  vanity, 
go  into  a  theater,  not  to  take  in  knowl- 
edge and  humanity,  but  to  give  out  igno- 
rance and  malice,  not  to  profit  by  t  heir 
mental  superior,  bu1  to  disparage  him, 
the\  arc  steeled  againsl  ennobling  influ- 
ences, and  bonded  to  beauties  however 
obvious.  But  the  retribution  is  sure. 
••'Depreciation"  is  the  writer's  road  to 
ruin.  Men  see,  in  our  difficull  art,  by  the 
divine  gift,  and  the  amiable  habit,  of  ap- 
preciation: to  appreciate  our  gifted  con- 
temporaries is  to  gather  unconsciously  a 
thousand  flowers  for  our  own  basket. 

The  depredator  despises  his  gifted  con- 
temporaries, and  so  gathers  nothing  but 
weeds  and  self-deception.  The  apprecia- 
tor  makes  a  name,  a  fortune,  and  a  sig- 
nature. The  depredator  tickles  his  own 
vanity,  but  gets  to  admire  nothing,  feel 
nothing,  create  nothing  and  be  nothing — 
but  a  cipher  signed  by  an  Initial. 
I  am.  sir, 

Your  obedient  servant. 
Charles  Reade. 


"  FOUL    PLAY." 
To  the  Editor  of  the  "Examiner  and  Times." 

Sir  —  The  Manchester  Examiner,  of 
June  25,  contains  some  remarks  upon 
the  above  drama,  which  amount  to  this, 
that  it  is  respectably  written,  but  poorly 
acted,  at  the  Theater  Royal.  This  sum- 
mary is  calculated  to  mislead  the  public, 
and  to  wound  artists  of  merit.  Permit 
me.  then,  to  correct   the  error. 

A  dramatist  is  entirely  at  the  mercy  of 
nis  actors;  let  him  write  like  an  angel, 
they  can  reduce  him  to  the  level  of  Poor 
Poll.  You  may.  therefore,  lay  it  down 
as  a  mat  hen  iat  ical  certainty  that  a  drama 
is  very  well  acted  if  it  holds  an  audience 
tighl  for  three  hours  and  forty  minutes, 
eliciting-  laughter,  tears,  applause,  ami 
few  or  no  yawns.  To  go  into  detail, 
which  is  the  surest  way,  Mr.  Coleman 
plays  Robert  Penfold  with  the  varia- 
tions of  manner  that  difficult  character 
requires.  EaSJ  and  natural  in  the  pro- 
logue, he  warms  w  il  h  1  he  ad\  ancing 
act  inn.  His  manner  of  dealing  with  the 
difficult  tirade  in  the  fourth  act  shows  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  his  art.  and  he 
works  the  act  up  tn  a  climax  with  a  fire 
that  is  invaluable  to  me.  and  rare  on  any 
stage.  On  the  whole,  ins  is  an  earnest, 
manly  performance.  Miss  Henrietta 
Simms  is  an  actress — young  in  years. 
but  old  in  experience — who  has  often 
played  leading  business  at  the  Adelphi 
Theater.  London.  She  has  presence  and 
dignity,   yet    can    be    sprightly   without 

effort.     She    lacks    neither    fire,    t er- 

ness,  nor  variety;  and,  as  one  example 
how  far  she  can  carry  those  three  quali- 
ties, lei  me  point  to  four  speeches  she 
delivers  in  the  principal  island  scene. 
They  follow  upon  Robert  Penfold 's  de- 
fense,  and  might  be  profitably  studied 
both  by  actors  and  critics.  But  elocu- 
tion is  only  a  part  of  the  great  histrionic 
art.  In  fact,  what  reveals  the  true  artist 
at  once,  is  his  dumb  play  ;  by  which  \ 
mean  the  play  of  his  countenance  while 
another  actor  is  speaking.  The  faces  of 
second-rate  actors  become  less  expressive 
when  they  are  silent,  but  the  dumb  play 


READIANA. 


365 


of  first-rate  actors  never  intermits,  and 
is  in  as  high  a  key  as  their  play.  Now 
in  this  branch  of  her  art  Miss  Simms  has 
hardly  a  living  rival.  Let  anybody  who 
cares  to  test  this  statement  watch  the 
changes  of  her  countenance  when  Robert 
Penfold  and  the  others  are  speaking  to 
her.  Let  him  observe  her  when  Arthur 
Wardlaw  places  in  her  hands  the  pearl 
from  Godsend  Island,  gradually  her  eyes 
dilate,  her  lips  part,  and,  long  before  she 
speaks  the  commonplace  line  I  have  given 
her,  all  the  sweet  memories  of  love  and 
Godsend  Island  seem  to  flow  into  her 
face,  and  elevate  it  with  a  tenderness 
that  has  really  something  divine.  Such 
strokes  of  g'enius  as  this  partake  of  in- 
spiration, and  are  the  glory  of  that  en- 
chanting art,  which  is  so  plentifully 
written  about,  but,  alas  !  so  little  com- 
prehended. Now  for  the  smaller  parts, 
which,  as  your  contributor  seemed  to 
think,  play  themselves.  I  know  the 
London  stage  by  heart,  and  there  is  not 
an  actor  on  it  who  can  look  and  play 
Wylie  as  well  as  Mr.  Horsman  does. 
Mrs.  Horsman's  performance  has,  upon 
the  whole,  breadth  and  geniality.  Mr. 
Edwards  is  a  tragedian,  who  plays  a 
part  he  dislikes,  to  oblige  us.  The  part 
contains  few  of  those  strong  effects  which 
suit  him,  but  he  never  misses  one.  The 
fourth  act  of  this  play  reveals  a  sailor 
lying  on  a  bank,  sick,  and  near  his  end. 
He  is  left  alone,  and  has  a  soliloqu}'  of 
eight  lines.  With  these  eight  lines,  and 
the  business  that  belongs  to  them,  an 
actor  holds  a  large  audience  hushed  and 
breathless,  and  draws  many  a  tear  from 
men  and  women.  And  who  is  this  ma- 
gician ?  It  is  Mr.  Royce,  the  low  come- 
dian of  Mr.  Coleman's  company.  Is  it 
usual  in  this  city  for  low  comedians  to 
draw  more  tears  with  eight  lines  than 
our  tragedians  draw  with  eight  plays  ? 
If  not,  why  pass  over  Mr.  Royce  as  if  I 
had  written  him  along  with  the  lines  he 
delivers  so  exquisitely  ?  Mr.  Chute,  a 
manager,  and  a  veteran  actor,  plays  the 
little  part  of  Wardlaw  Senior  to  oblige 
me,  and  I  begin  to  fear  he  plays  it  too 
well.  The  purity,  the  quiet  dignity,  and 
gentlemanly  ease  with  which  he  invests 


it  are  too  rare  upon  the  stage  to  be 
promptly  appreciated.  All  I  can  say  is, 
that  since  Dowton's  time  I  have  seen 
nothing  of  this  class  so  easy,  natural, 
and   perfect. 

I  fear,  sir,  I  have  trespassed  on  your 
courtesy ;  but  I  am  sure  you  would  not 
willingly  lend  yourself  to  an  injustice,  and 
I  even  think  and  hope  that,  should  3rour 
critic  revisit  the  theater,  he  will  come 
round  to  my  opinion — viz.,  that  "Foul 
Play  "  owes  a  large  share  of  its  success 
to  the  talent  and  zeal  of  the  performers, 
and  especially  of  those  who  play  the  small 
characters. 

I  am,  sir, 

Your  obedient  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 

Palatine  Hotel, 

June  26th,  1868. 


THE   SHAM    SAMPLE    SWINDLE. 
"FOUL  PLAY." 

The  world  is  so  wicked  and  so  old,  that 
it  is  hard  to  invent  a  new  knavery.  Nev- 
ertheless, certain  writers  are  now  prac- 
ticing an  old  fraud  with  a  new  face,  and 
gulling  the  public  and  the  Press. 

Nothing  baffles  the  literary  detective  so 
much  as  a  nameless  knavery.  I  begin, 
therefore,  by  depriving  the  fraud  in  ques- 
tion of  that  unfair  advantage,  and  I  call 
it— 

THE    SHAM    SAMPLE    SWINDLE. 

Examples. — 1.  A  farmer  prepares  his 
sample  of  wheaten  grain  for  market. 
His  duty  is  to  put  his  two  hands  fairly 
into  the  bulk  and  so  fill  his  sample-bag. 
But  one  day,  in  my  experience,  a  Berk- 
shire farmer  picked  his  grain  for  show  ; 
that  is,  he  went  through  the  sample,  and 
merely  removed  the  inferior  grains.     He 


366 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


stood  in  the  market  with  the  sham  sam- 
ple, and  readily  sold  twenty  load  of  grain 
at  more  than  its  value.  The  fraud  was 
sd,  and  the  farmer  driven  out  of 
the  market. 

2.  Suppose  some  malicious  rogue  had 
access  to  a  farmer's  sample-bag",  and 
were  to  remove  the  fine  grains,  and  leave 
the  inferior  —  that  would  destroy  Hie 
farmer's  sale  and  be  also  a  sham  sample 
swindle.   Of  course  nothing  so  wicked  was 

■  lie  in  agriculture  ;  bu1  there  is  a 
baser  trade  in  the  world  than  agriculture, 
and  plied  by  dirtier  hands  than  those  which 
seal  ter  dung  upon  our  fields. 

3.  I  read  one  day  an  article  in  a  Quar- 
terly Review,  in  which  these  two  expres- 
sions occurred  more  than  once,  "the 
author  of  ' Robinson  Crusoe,'"  and  "the 
author  of  the  •  Lily  and  the  Bee.'  "  Now, 
I  >efoe  «  rote  several  stupid  si  oi  i 

one  masterpiece  ;  Warren  wrote  several 
powerful  stories  ami  one  foolish  rhapsody  ; 
e,  in  t  he  name  of  science  i  for  cril  i- 
cism  is  science,  or  it  is  nothing)  is  War- 
ren defined  by  ins  exceptional  failure,  and 
Defoe  by  ins  exceptional  success;  and 
thai  is  one  form  of  the  sham  sample 
swindle.     [N.B.    The  dead  are  apt  to  get 

i,n\   side  of  this  swim 
h\  ing  i  he  windy  side.] 

1.  A  writer  produces  a  great  book. 
With  all  its  beauties  it  is  sure  i * .  have 
Haws,  being  written  h\  man.  who  is  an 
imperfect  creature.  The  sham  sample 
swindler  picks  oul  the  flaw  or  Haws. 
quotes  them  bodily,  whii  an  air  of 

honesty,  and  then  says.   "  IIY  could  give 
a  host  of  <<1h<r  examples,  but  thi 
serve  l<>  show  the  general  charai 
the  work." 

The  swindle  lies  in  the  words  italicized. 
They  declare  a  sham  sample  to  be  a  true 
sample:  and.  observe,  this  is  a  falsehood 
that  cannot  fail  to  deceive  the  reader. 
For  why  ?  The  grain  of  truth  that  sup- 
port s  the  falsehood  is  shown  ;  the  mass 
of  truth  that  contradicts  the  falsehood  is 
hidden. 

■  >.  A  great  work  of  fiction  is  written  : 
it  is  rich  in  invention  and  novel  combina- 
tion ;  but,  as  men  of  genius  have  a  singu- 
larly keen  appreciation  of  all  that  is  good, 


and  can  pick  out  pearls  where  obscure 
scribblers  could  see  nothing  but  rubbish, 
the  author  has,  perhaps,  borrowed  one  or 
two  things  from  other  written  sources, 
ami  incorporated  them  happily  with  the 
bulk  of  his  invention.  If  so.  they  ought 
to  be  pointed  out  to  the  public,  and  are, 
of  course,  open  to  stricture  from  un- 
learned critics,  who  do  not  know  to  what 
an  extent  Shakespeare,  Virgil,  Moliere, 
Corneille,  Defoe,  Le  Sage,  Scott,  Dumas. 
etc..  have  pursued  this  very  method,  and 
how  much  tin'  public  gain  by  it.  But  the 
sham  sample  swindler  is  not  content  to 
point  out  the  borrowed  portion,  and  say 
.  so  and  so  is  not  original,  Hie 
rest  may  be.  His  plan  is  to  quote  the 
plagiarism,     and     then    add.     ■■Ami    that 

pari  of  Hi'  work  we  do  not  quote  is  nil 
mi  from  tin  same  cloth." 

lie  tells  1  his  lie  in  cold  blood,  with  his 
eyes  upon  the  truth:  and.  as  I  said  be- 
:s  a  fraud  thai  can  never  fail  on 
I  he  spol .  because  t  he  borrowed  part  of 
the  work  is  in  sight,  the  hulk  of  the  work- 
is  out  of  sighl . 

So  much  by  way  of  general  descrip- 
tion, 

I  come  now  to  a  remarkable  example : 
Several  journalist-  no)  blessed  with  much 
i  reasoning  on  literary  subjects 
are  repeating  that  "  Foul  Play,"  a  three 
volume  novel,  which  originally  appeared 
in  this  magazine,  is  a  servile  copy  of  an 
obscure  French  drama,  called  "Le  Porte- 
Eeuille  Rouge." 

Not  to  waste  time  on  echoes,  I  have 
traced  this  rumor  to  its  source,  a  monthly 
magazine,  called  the  Mask.  Here,  the 
writer,  in  a  form,  the  modesty  and  good 
taste  of  which  I  shall  leave  to  the  judge 
in  whose  court  1  may  select  to  try  the 
proprietors  of  the  Mask  for  the  libel, 
conveys  to  the  public  a  comparison  of  the 
two  works,  and  contemptuously  comments 
upon  the  more  brilliant  and  important  of 
the  two. 

He  conducts  the  comparison  on  a  two- 
fold plan.  First  he  deals  with  the  inci- 
dents of  the  two  works.  Secondly,  with 
the  dialogue.  But  how  ?  In  the  first 
branch  of  comparison  he  supresses  Aths 
of  the  striking  incidents  in  "Foul  Play," 


READIAXA. 


367 


and  at  least  Aths  of  the  strong  incidents 
in  "  Le  Portefeuille  Rouge,"  and,  then, 
bjr  slightly  twisting  the  few  incidents 
that  survive  this  process,  and  by  arbitra- 
rily wording  this  double  sham  sample 
swindle  in  similar  language  (which  lan- 
guage is  his,  not  ours),  he  makes  the  two 
works  appear  much  alike  in  incident,  al- 
though they  are  on  the  whole  quite  unlike 
in  incident. 

Secondly,   he    comes   to   the    dialogue. 
And  here  he  is  met  by  a  difficulty  none  of 


the  sham  samplers  who  preceded  him  had 
to  face.  He  could  not  find  a  line  in 
"  Foul  Play  "  that  had  been  suggested  by 
a  line  in  "Le  Portefeuille  Rouge."'  What 
was  to  be  done  ?  He  hit  upon  the  drollest 
expedient.  He  selected  a  dialogue  from 
"  Le  Portefeuille  Rouge  "  and  set  it  cheek 
by  jowl,  not  with  parallel  passages  in 
"Foul  Play,"  which  was  what  his  argu- 
ment demanded,  but  with  a  lame  and  in- 
correct translation  of  itself.  Here  is  a 
specimen  of  his  method  : 


:LE   PORTEFEUILLE   ROUGE." 


THE     PLACE      WHERE      "  FOUL 
PLAY  ■•    OUGHT    TO    BE. 


KERVEGUEN.  KERVEGUEX. 

Pour  rien  au  monde,  je  n'aurais  voulu  For  nothing  in  the  world  I  would  not 

vous  laisser  seul   ici ;   mais,   d'un    autre  wish   to  leave  3Tou  ;    but,    on   the   other 

cote,  quels  risques  n'auriez-vous  pas  cou-  hand,  what  risks  would  you  not  run  in 

rus  en  vous  embarquant  avec  nous  ?   .    .  .  your  embarking  with  us  ? 


Quoi!  mon  pere,  auriez-vous  done  1'idee        What,   ray   lather,    had   you   then   the 
de  parti  sans  lui ?  idea  to  go  without  him? 


KERVEGUEN. 


KERVEGUEX. 


Le  batiment  que  je  monte  apparment  a  The  ship  which  I  mount  belongs  to  the 

l'Etat,  et  je  ne  saurais  prendre  avec  moi  State,  and  I  should  not  know  how  to  take 

un  homme   condamne    par  les  lois  fran-  with  me  a  man  condemned  by  the  French 

gaises.  laws. 


Injustement   condamne,  mon   pere;  M. 
Maurice  est  innocent. 


HELEXE. 

Unjustly  condemned,  1113-  father. 


KERVEGUEX. 


KERVEGUEX. 


Dieu  m'est  temoin  que  je  le  souhaite  de        Heaven  is   my  witness   that  I  hope  it 
toute  mon  ame  !  with  all  my  soul. 


And  so  on  for  seventy  speeches.  By 
this  method  it  is  craftily  insinuated  to  the 
reader  that  seventy  speeches  of  "  Foul 
Play "  could  be  quoted  to  prove  the 
plagiarism,  though  not  one  speech  is 
quoted.  Curious,  that  a  maneuver  so 
transparent  should  succeed.  But  it  has 
succeeded — for  a  time. 

Unfortunately  for  truth  and  justice,  the 
sham  sample  swindle,  being  founded  on 
suppression,  has  the  advantage  of  brevi- 
ty ;  whereas  its  exposure  must  always  be 
long  and  tedious.  But.  since  in  this  case 
it  has  attacked  not  my  ability  only,  but 


my  probity  in  business,  I  hope  my  read- 
ers will  be  patient,  and  consider  for  once 
how  hard  it  is,  after  many  months  of 
ardent  and  successful  labor  and  invention 
to  be  not  only  decried,  but  slandered  and 
insulted  for  my  pains  I 

I  know  no  positive  antidote  to  a  dis- 
honest comparison,  except  an  honest  com- 
parison. A  novel  is  not  the  same  thing 
as  a  drama;  but  no  doubt  they  have 
three  essentials  in  common.  1.  Charac- 
ters. 2.  Incidents.  3.  Dialogue.  Let  us, 
then,  compare  the  two  works  on  that 
treble  basis. 


368 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


CHARACTERS     IN       •  LE      PORTE-    CHARACTERS    IN   "FOUL   PLAY." 
FEUILLE   ROUGE." 


1.  Durome,  a  banker  and  loose-liver. 

2.  De  Folbert,  a  daring-,  middle-aged 
ruffian,  fearing  nothing,  loving  nothing. 
The  trite  monster  of  Melodrama,  that 
never  existed  in  nature. 

3.  Maurice,  a  young  layman,  interest- 
ing by  his  sufferings  and  adventures,  but 
as  to  character,  utterly  commonplace. 

4.  Faustin.  Durome's  servant. 

5.  Bouquin,  a  sailor. 

6.  Le  Pere  Lajoie. 

7.  Daniel. 

8.  Gamier,  a  surgeon. 

9.  Vest  ris. 

10.  Chasse. 

11.  Le  Comte  de  KLerveguen,  captain  of 
a  vessel — who  has  got  a  daughter. 

12.  Helene,  daughter  of  I  he  preceding — 
a  weak,  amiable  girl,  who  parts  with  her 
virtue  the  flrsl  fair  opportunity.  This 
character  is  undistinguishable  from  a. 
thousand  others  in  French  fiction. 


13.  Madame  Delaunay,  aunt  to  the  pre- 
ceding. 

14.  Miss  Deborah,  Helene's  gouver- 
nante. 

15.  Jacqueline,  Fausl  in's  \\  ife. 

L6,  Mademoiselles  Dufrene,  Duth6,  and 
Fel,  \  oung  Ladies  i1  may  be  as  well  not  to 
describe  too  minutely  . 

IT.   Ursule,  a  lady's-maid. 

18.  .Marcel,  a  French  Cockney,  who 
gets  senl  to  sea,  an  admirable  character : 
indeed,  the  only  new  character  in  the 
drama. 

19.  An  ape. 


1.  Old  Wardlaw,  an  honorable  mer- 
chant . 

2.  Young  Wardlaw.  a  weak  youth,  led 
into  crime  by  cowardice  ;  a  knave  tort- 
ured by  remorse  and  rendered  human  by 
an  earnest  love. 

3.  Michael  Penfold,  a  worthy  timid  old 
man,  cashier  to  Wardlaw.  Senior. 

4.  Robert  Penfold,  his  son.  a  clergy- 
man, and  a  man  of  rare  gifts,  muscular. 
learned,  inventive,  patient,  self-denying, 
delicate-minded  :  a  marked  character,  new 

in  fiction. 


5.  General  Rolleston,  governor  of  a 
penal  settlement,  and  a  soldier,  who, 
however,  has  gol  a  daughter. 

6.  Helen  (daughter  of  the  preceding),  a 
young  lady  of  marked  character,  hard  to 
win  and  hard  to  lose,  virtuous  under 
temptation,  ami  distinguished  by  a  te- 
nacity of  purpose  which  is  rarely  found  in 
her  s,'\.  Upon  the  whole,  a  character 
almost  new  in  Motion. 


7.  Hiram  Hudson,  captain  of  the  Pros- 
erpine, a  good  seaman,  who  has  been 
often  employed  to  cast  away  ships. 
When  drunk,  he  descants  on  his  duty 
to  his  employers.  This  character  is  based 
on  reality,  and  is  entirely  new  in  fiction. 

8.  Joseph  Wylie,  his  male,  a  man  of 
physical  strength,  yet  cunning  :  a  rogue, 
hut  a  manly  one.  goaded  by  avarice,  but 
stung  by  remorse. 

9.  Cooper,  a  taciturn  sailor,  with  an 
antique  friendship  for  talkative  Welch. 

to.  Welch,  a  talkative  sailor,  with  an 
antique  friendship  for  taciturn  Cooper. 
These  two  sailors  are  characters  entirely 
new  in  fiction.  So  are  their  adventures 
and  their  deaths. 

11.  Joshua  Fullalove.  a  character  cre- 
ated by  myself  in  "  Hard  Cash  '*  and  reprof 
duced  in  "Foul  Play"  with  the  consent  o- 
my  collaborator. 

12.  Burt,  a  detective. 

13.  Undercliffe,  an  expert  ;  a  character 


READIANA. 


369 


based  on  reality,  but  entirely  new  in  fic- 
tion. He  reads  handwriting1  wonderfully, 
but  cannot  read  circumstances. 

14.  Mrs.  Undercliffe,  mother  to  the  ex- 
pert, a  woman  who  has  no  skill  at  hand- 
writing', but  reads  faces  and  circum- 
stances keenly. 

15.  Tollemache,  a  barrister. 

16.  Meredith,  a  barrister  of  a  different 
stamp. 

17.  Sarah  Wilson. 

18.  A  squinting  barber,  who  sees  a  man 
in  trouble,  and  so  demands  10s.  for  shav- 
ing him. 

19.  Adams,  a  bill  broker. 

20.  Somebody,  an  underwriter. 

21.  Nancy  Rouse,  a  lodging-house 
keeper  and  washerwoman,  and  a  charac- 
ter new  in  fiction. 


Now  it  is  an  axiom  in  literary  criticism 
that  to  invent  incidents  is  a  lower  art 
than  to  invent  characters ;  and  the 
writer  in  the  Mask  fires  off  this  axiom 
at  me.  So  be  it.  I  find  nineteen  distinct 
characters  in  "Le  Portefeuille  Rouge," 
and,  out  of  the  nineteen,  fifteen  bear  no 
shadow  of  resemblance,  in  act  or  word, 
to  any  character  in  "  Foul  Play  :  "*  yet 
of  these  fifteen  many  are  the  very  engines 
of  the  play.  I  find  twenty-one  distinct 
characters  in  "  Foul  Play,"  and,  of  these, 
seventeen  bear  no  resemblance,  either  in 
deed  or  word,  to  any  character  in  "Le 
Portefeuille  Rouge."  Yet  these  seven- 
teen are  busy  characters,  and  take  a  large 
share  in  the  plot.  As  to  the  small  bal- 
ance of  four  persons,  the  two  heroines  are 
so  opposite  in  characters  that  no  writer, 
whose  eye  was  on  the  French  Helene, 
could  possibly  have  created  the  English 
Helen.  The  same  remark  applies  to  De 
Folbert  and  Arthur  Wardlaw  :  they  are 
both  rogues ;  but  then  they  are  opposite 
rogues.  Why,  they  differ  as  widely  as  a 
bold  highwayman  and  an  anonymous 
slanderer. 

Setting  aside  Incident,  which  awaits  its 
turn  in  this  comparison,  I  can  find  no 
character — except  that  of  General  Rolles- 
ton — which  resembles  a  character  in 
'■  Foul  Play."  Kerveguen  is  a  sailor  and 
the  captain  of  a  ship  ;  so  far  he  corre- 
sponds, not  with  General  Rolleston,  but 
with  the  Captain  Hudson  of  "  Foul  Play." 
But  then  this  sailor   has   also  a  resolute 


character  and  a  daughter,  and  she  is  the 
heroine  of  the  drama.  Now  the  soldier 
Rolleston  has  also  a  resolute  character, 
and  a  daughter  who  is  the  heroine  of 
"  Foul  Play."  The  plagiarism  of  charac- 
ter, if  any,  is  manifestly  confined  to  the 
heroine's  father,  one  character  out  of 
thirty-eight  and  more,  who  act,  and 
speak,  and  think,  and  feel  in  the  two 
works.  How  far  does  this  correspond 
with  the  impression  the  sham  sampler 
has  sought  to  create  ? 

We  come  now  to  the  incidents  of  the 
two  works,  and  these,  handled  on  the 
above  honest  method,  yield  precisely  the 
same  result.  But  to  work  this  out  on 
paper  would  take  a  volume.  Something, 
however,  may  be  done  in  a  shorter  com- 
pass by  the  help  of  figures.  "Foul 
Play,"  then,  is  contained  in  25  numbers 
of  Once  a  Week.  And  these  numbers 
average,  I  believe,  14  columns  each,  or 
rather  more.  The  first  number  is  very 
busy,  and  deals  with  crime  and  love.  The 
prologue  of  the  French  drama  does  not 
deal  with  love  at  all,  and  with  crime  of 
quite  another  character.  In  the  story 
the  crime  is  forgery:  and  that  crime 
remains  part  of  the  plot  to  the  end.  In 
the  drama  the  true  generative  incident  is 
murder.  That  murder  is  committed  by  a 
villain  who  had.  previously,  forged :  but 
the  previous  forgery  could  be  omitted 
without  affecting  the  plot.  The  funda- 
mental incident  of  the  drama  is  mur- 
der.     The    two    fundamental    incidents 


370 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


of  "Foul  Play"  are  forgery,  and  the 
scuttling-  of  a  ship  to  defraud  the  un- 
derwriters. 

From  No.  1  to  No.  4,  '-Foul  Play,'' 
though  full  of  incidents,  has  not  an  idea 
in  common  with  the  drama.  In  the 
fourth  number  the  two  works  have  tins 
in  common,  that  the  hero  and  heroine  are 
on  board  one  ship,  and  thai  ship  gets 
lost.  But  in  the  drama  the  father  is 
there,  and  m  the  story  lie  is  not;  the 
hero  and  heroine  arc  brought  on  board 
by  entirely  different  incidents  in  the  two 
works,  and  the  French  ship  is  fired  by 
mere  accident.  Not  so  the  English  ship: 
thai  is  scuttled  by  order  of  the  heroine's 

lover:  and  so  the  knave  is  made  the 
means  of  throwing  the  woman  he  loves 
upon  the  protection  of  the  friend  he  has 
ruined,  This  is  invention  and  combina- 
t  inn    of  a   high  order.     Hut  calling  upon 

an  unforeseen  accident   to  effed   a  solitary 

e,  and  t  hen  dismissing  t  he  a 

forever,  is  jnsl  \\  h.,t  an\  foi 
any  moment,  and  it  is  all  the  authors  of 
the  French  drama  have  attempted  to  do 
in  i  hat  sit  ua1  urn.  From  I  he  it  b  number 
to  the  last  page  but  one  of  the  L7th  num- 
ber, •■  Foul  1'lay"  diverges  entirely  from 

I  he  drama,  i I  he   drama  from  "  F<  ul 

Play."     The  existence  of  those  thirteen 
numbers  (more  l  han  one  half  of  thi 
story)    is  virtually   denied  by  the  sham 
sampler  in  these  words: 

"Construction  and  incidents  are  French, 
and  taken  from  the  defendant's  drama." 

Yet  these  thirteen  numbers  are  the 
most  admired  of  the  whole.  They  arc 
the  poem  of  the  work.  They  deal  with 
the  strange,  the  true,  the  terrible,  and 
the  beautiful.     Here  are  to  be  found  the 


only  numbers  which  I  received  complete 
in  form  as  well  as  in  substance  from  my 
accomplished  collaborateui-,  and  it  was 
this  half  of  the  work  which  drew  in  one 
week  forty  notices  from  .  1  merican  jour- 
nals. Those  journals,  commenting  on  the 
adventures  and  contrivances  of  certain 
persons  wrecked  on  the  Auckland  Isl- 
ands, remarked  that  History  was  imi- 
tating fiction,  and  so  sent  their  readers 
to  'Foul  Play."  History  will  never 
"  Le  Portefeuille  Rouge,"  anj 
more  than  1  have  descended  to  imitate 
"Le  Portefeuille  Rouge."  At  the  end  of 
the  17th  number  of  "  Foul  Flay."  I  ten- 
era]  Rolleston  lands  on  the  unknown 
island,  and  finds  his  daughter  and  the 
mvict  Living  a  lone  I  ogel  her. 
And  m  the  9th  scene  of  the  2d  act  of 
•■  Portefeuille  Rouge,"  Cerveguen  comes 

wit  b  01  her  characters,  and  finds  his 
daughter,  the  innocenl  convict,  and 
.Marcel.  This  is  a  good  and  generative 
sii  nat  ion.  and  looks  like  plagiarism  in  t  he 
novel.  Bu1  the  momenl  we  come  to  the 
treatment,  the  acts  and  the  words  of  ail 
the  i  hree  interlocutors  are  so  remarkably 
differenl  in  the  two  works,  that  no  honesl 
and  discerning  man  can  believe  the  writer 

of  t  hat  scene  ill  ■•  Foul  Flay  "  had  Ins  eye 
on  the  drama.  In  the  story  the  father 
and  daughter  meet  alone  with  wild  rap- 
equal  to  1  he  occasion  ;  a  sacred 
scene.  In  the  play  they  meet  before  wit- 
nesses, and  la-  Fl  et  Cb  nraniat  ists  with 
very  bad  judgment  have  allowed  the  low 
comedian  to  be  present.  He  opens  his 
mouth,  and  of  bourse  the  scene  goes  to 
t  he  devil  at   once. 

In  the  subsequent    dialogue   and   busi- 
ness, I  find  great    variations. 


IN  THE  DRAMA 


IN  THE  NOVEL 


Helene  sides  at  once  with  Maurice,  and 
argues  the  case  with  her  father,  and 
Maurice  is  almost  passive.  Maurice  is 
never  master  of  the  situation.  On  the 
contrary,  he  tries  to  follow  Helene  on 
board,  and  is  shot  like  a  dog  in  the  at- 
tempt. Helene  never  undertakes  to  clear 
him.     All  is  left  to  accident. 


Helen  puts  Robert  Penfold  on  his  defense, 
and  on  his  convincing  her  he  is  innocent. 
declares  her  love.  Then  Robert  Penfold 
becomes  master  of  the  situation,  and  it  is 
by  his  own  will,  and  high  sense  of  honor. 
he  remains,  and  the  parting  is  affected. 
And  Helen  and  her  father  undertake  to 
clear  him  in  England  :  which  promise,  on 
Helen's  part,  with  its  many  consequences, 
is  the  very  plot  of  the  sequel. 


EEADIANA. 


371 


From  this  to  the  end  of  the  work,  we 
have  seven  numbers  of  "  Foul  Play," 
and  two  acts  of  "  Portefeuille  Rouge," 
and  not  an  idea  in  common  between  the 
two.  So  that  twenty-three  numbers  out 
of  twenty-five,  ''Foul  Play,"  have  not 
an  idea  in  common  with  the  French 
drama  ;  two  numbers  out  of  twenty-five 
have  each  a  bare  situation  which  looks 
like  one  in  the  drama,  but  on  closer  in- 
spection prove  to  be  handled  so  differently 
that  the  charge  of  plagiarism  is  unten- 
able. 

"Foul  Play"  is  illustrated  by  Mr.  Du 
Maurier.  The  said  Du  Maurier  is  a  good 
actor,  and  has  dramatic  tendencies.  He 
is  sure  to  have  picked  out  some  of  the 
more  dramatic  situations  in  "  Foul  Play  " 
for  illustration,  and,  if  the  incidents  of 
'•Foul  Play"  came  from  the  ''Porte- 
feuille Rouge,"  Mr.  Du  Maurier's  sketches 
would  serve  to  illustrate  that  drama.  I 
have  examined  his  illustrations,  twelve 
in  number;  I  cannot  find  one  that  fits 
any  scene  or  incident  in  the  French 
drama.  If  they  were  all  pasted  into  the 
"Portefeuille  Rouge,"  no  reader  of  that 
drama  would  be  able  to  apply  any  one  of 
them  to  anything-  in  the  whole  composi- 
tion. Bring  your  minds  to  bear  on  this 
fact.     It  is  worth  study. 

And  now  I  come  to  the  dialogue  of  the 
works.  Here  the  comparison  is  a  blank. 
There  is  nothing  to  compare.  The  writer 
in  the  Mask  dared  not  put  seventy 
speeches  from  "Foul  Play"  by  the  side 
of  his  seventy  speeches  from  "Porte- 
feuille Rouge."  He  dared  not  deal  thus 
honestly  with  even  seven  speeches.  And 
shall  I  tell  you  why  ?  Because  there  is 
not  one  line  in  "Foul  Play"  that  cor- 
responds with  a  line  in  "  Portefeuille 
Rouge." 

Shakespeare,  in  the  "  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,"  has  the  following  line  : 
"  I'll  rather  be  unmannerly  than  troublesome." 
And   Moliere,  in  his  "  Bourgeois  Gentil- 
homme,"  has  this  line  : 

"J'aime  mieux  etre  incivil  qu'importun." 
I  can  find  no  such  apparent  plagiarism  in 
all  the  pages  of  "Foul  Play"  and  "Le 
Portefeuille  Rouge." 


I  conclude  this  subject  with  the  follow- 
ing statements  of  matters  known  to 
me  : — 

1.  I  have  carefully  examined  all  the 
MS.  contributed  to  "  Foul  Play  "  by  Mr. 
Dion  Boucicault.  This  MS.  consists  of 
two  or  three  numbers  complete  in  form 
as  well  as  in  substance;  and  also  of  a 
great  many  plans  of  numbers,  sketches, 
materials  and  inventive  ideas  of  singular 
merit  and  value.  In  all  this  MS.  I  find 
only  one  word  that  can  have  come  from 
••  Portefeuille  Rouge,"  and  that  word  is 
— Helen. 

2.  I  myself  never  saw  "  Le  Portefeuille 
Rogue  "  until  after  the  article  in  the  Mask 
appeared — never  saw  it  nor  heard  of  it. 

3.  The  one  valuable  situation  the  two 
works  contain  in  common  may  have  come 
to  me  from  Mr.  Boucicault,  but  if  so  it 
came  in  conversation,  along  with  many 
other  tlungs  quite  as  good,  and  the  guilt, 
if  any,  of  selecting  the  naked  idea,  which 
is  all  we  have  used,  lies  with  me,  who 
never  saw  the  "Portefeuille  Rogue." 

■i.  I  handled,  treated,  and  wrote  every 
line,  on  which  the  charge  of  unprincipled 
plagiarism  has  been  founded,  and  I  have 
got  my  MS.  to  prove  it. 

5.  Any  person  connected  with  literature 
can  compare  the  "Portefeuille  Rouge" 
and  "Foul  Play"  at  my  house;  and  I 
shall  be  grateful  to  any  literary  brother 
who  may  have  the  honesty  and  patience 
to  do  it. 

6.  The  writer  in  the  Mask  has  done 
this,  and  having  done  it,  he  must  have 
known  that  his  charge  of  unprincipled 
plagiarism  was  false  and  disingenuous. 
Yet,  knowing  this,  he  was  not  content  to 
do  me  a  moderate  injury ;  it  was  not 
enough  to  defraud  an  honored  writer  of 
his  reputation  as  an  inventor ;  he  must 
attack  my  character  as  a  gentleman,  and 
as  a  fair  dealer  with  publishers  and  man- 
agers. On  this  account  I  am  going  to 
make  an  example  of  him.  I  shall  sue  him 
for  libel,  and.  when  we  meet  in  the  Court 
of  Common  Pleas.  I  shall  repeat  upon  my 
oath  as  a  Christian  all  the  statements, 
which  now  I  make  in  these  columns  upon 
my  honor  as  a  gentleman. 

I  shall  ask  leave  to  return  to  the  sham 


3?2 


WORKS   OF    CHARLES  READE. 


sample  swindle  on  some  other  occasion, 
and  in  a  way  that  will  he  less  egotistical 
and  more  interesting-  to  your  readers.  It 
is  the  most  potent  swindle  in  creation, 
and  all  honest  writers  should  combine  to 
expose  it.  Charles  Reade. 

2  Albert  Terrace,  Kmghtsbridge, 
August  V-'.th,  1868. 


IT 


IS    NEVER   TOO 
MEND." 


LATE    TO 


From  the  "Reader,"  October 28th,  1865. 

Sir — You  have  published  (inadvertent- 
ly, I  hope)  two  columns  of  intemperate 
abuse  aimed  at  my  drama,  and  menda- 
cious persona  lil  ies  leveled  a1   mj  self. 

The  author  of  this  spite  is  nol  ashamed 
to  sympathize  with  the  heartless  rohbers 
from  whom  justice  and  law  have  rescued 
my  creation  and  my  properly. 

(Query — Was  he  nol  sel  on  i>\  those 
very  robbers?) 

He  evm  eulogizes  a  ruffian  who.  on  the 
4th  October,  raised  a  disturbance  in  the 
Princess's  Theater,  and  endeavored  to 
put  down  my  play  by  clamor,  bu1  was 
called  to  order-  by  the  respectable  portion 
of  the  audience. 

Have  you  any  sense  of  justice  and  fair 
play  where  the  party  assailed  is  only  an 
author  of  repute,  and  the  assailant  has 
the  advantage  of  being  an  obscure  Scrib- 
bler? If  so.  you  will  give  me  a  hearing 
in  my  defense.  I  reply  in  one  sentence  to 
two  columns  of  venom  and  drivel.  I  just 
beg  to  inform  honest  men  and  women 
that  your  anonymous  contributor,  who 
sides  with  piratical  thieves  against  the 
honest  inventor,  and  disparages  Charles 
Reade,  and  applauds  one  Tomlins  —  is 
Tomlins. 

I  am, 

Your  obedient  servant. 

Charles  Reade. 

92  St.  George's  Road,  South  Belgravia, 
October  21st.  1865. 


THE      "  EDINBURGH       REVIEW" 

AND    THE    "SATURDAY 

REVIEW." 


A    LETTER. 

Saturday  Review — You  have  brains 
of  your  own.  and  good  ones.  Do  not  you 
echo  the  bray  of  such  a  very  small  ass  as 
the  Edinburgh  Review.  Be  more  just  to 
yourself  and  to  me.  Relied  !  1  must  be 
six  times  a  greater  writer  than  ever  lived, 
ere  1  could  exaggerate  suicide,  despair, 
and  the  horrors  thai  drove  young  and  old 
to  them  ;  or  (to  vary  your  own  phrase) 
write  ••  a  libel  upon  hell." 

Yours    sincerely. 

Charles  Reade. 

GaRIUCK    (    III'.. 

Juli/  82d,  1857. 


THE    PRURIENT    PRUDE, 

Sir — There  is  a  kind  of  hypocrite  that 
has  never  been  effectually  exposed,  for 
want  of  an  expressive  name.  I  beg  to 
supply  that  defect  in  our  language,  and 
introduce  to  mankind  the  Prurient 
Pride.  Modesty  in  man  or  woman  shows 
itself  by  a  certain  slowness  to  put  a  foul 
construction  on  things,  and  also  by  unob- 
trusively shunning  indelicate  matters  and 
discussions.  The  "Prurient  Prude," 
on  the  contrary,  itches  to  attract  atten- 
tion by  a  parade  of  modesty  (which  is  the 
mild  form  of  the  disease),  or  even  by 
rashly  accusing  others  of  immodesty 
(and   this  is   the   noxious   form). 

"Doctor  Johnson."  said  a  lady,  "  what 
I  admire  in  your  dictionary  is  that  you 
have  inserted  no  improper  words." 

';  What !  you  looked  for  them,  madam?" 
said  the  doctor. 


READIAXA. 


373 


Here  was  a  "Prurient  Prude."'  that 
would  have  taken  in  an  ordinary  lexi- 
cographer. 

The  wickeder  kind  of  "  Prurient 
Prude  *'  lias  committed  great  ravages  in 
our  English  railways,  where  the  carriages, 
you  must  know,  are  small  and  seldom 
filled  Respectable  men  found  themselves 
alone  with  a  shy-looking  female,  addressed 
a  civil  remark  to  her,  were  accused  at  the 
end  of  the  journey  of  attempting  her 
vii'tue,  and  punished  unjustly,  or  else  had 
to  buy  her  off :  till  at  last,  as  I  learn 
from  an  article  in  the  Saturday  Review, 
many  worthy  men  refused  to  sit  in  a  car- 
riage where  there  was  a  woman  only ; 
such  terror  had  the  "Prurient  Prude'" 
inspired  in  manly  breasts.  The  last  of 
these  heroines,  however,  came  to  grief ; 
her  victim  showed  fight ;  submitted  to 
trial,  and  set  the  police  on  her  :  she  proved 
to  be,  as  any  one  versed  in  human  nature 
could  have  foretold,  a  woman  of  remark- 
ably loose  morals  ;  and  she  is  at  this  mo- 
ment expiating  her  three  P's — Prudery, 
Prurience,  and  Perjury — in  one  of  her 
majesty's  jails. 

Some  years  ago  an  English  baronet  was 
nearly  ruined  and  separated  from  his  wife 
by  one  of  these  ladies.  He  was  from  the 
country,  and  by  force  of  habit  made  his 
toilet  nearer  the  window  than  a  Londoner 
would.  A  "Prurient  Prude''  lurked 
opposite,  and  watched  him  repeatedly  ; 
which  is  just  what  no  modest  woman 
would  have  done  once ;  and,  interpreting 
each  unguarded  action  by  the  light  of  her 
own  foul  imagination,  actually  brought  a 
criminal  charge  against  the  poor  soul. 
The  chai'ge  fell  to  the  ground  the  moment 
it  was  sifted  ;  but  in  the  meantime,  what 
agony  had  the  "  Prurient  Prude  "  in- 
flicted on  an  innocent  family  ! 

Unfortunately  the  "  Prurient  Prude  " 
is  not  confined  to  the  female  sex.  It  is 
not  to  be  found  among  men  of  masculine 
pursuits ;  but  it  exists  among  writers. 
Example  :  a  divorce  case,  unfit  for  publi- 
cation, is  reported  by  all  the  English 
journals.  Next  day,  instead  of  being  al- 
lowed to  die,  it  is  renewed  in  a  leader. 
The  writer  of  this  leader  begins  by  com- 
plaining of  the  courts  of  law  for  giving 


publicity  to  Filth. — (N.B.  the  ridiculous 
misuse  of  this  term,  where  not  filth  but 
crime  is  intended,  is  an  infallible  sign  of  a 
dirty  mind,  and  marks  the  "Prurient 
Prude.")  After  this  flourish  of  prudery, 
Pruriens  goes  with  gusto  into  the  details, 
which  he  had  just  said  were  unfit  for  pub- 
lication. Take  down  your  file  of  English 
journals  and  you  will  soon  lay  your  hand 
on  this  variet3^  of  the  "Prurient  Prude.-' 
A  harmless  little  humbug  enough. 

But,  as  among  women,  so  among 
writers,  the  "Prurient  Prude"  be- 
comes a  less  transparent  and  more  dan- 
gerous impostor,  when,  strong  in  the 
shelter  of  the  Anonymous,  which  hides 
from  the  public  his  own  dissolute  life  and 
obscene  conversation,  he  reads  his  neigh- 
bor by  the  light  of  his  own  corrupt  imag- 
ination, and  so  his  prurient  prudery  takes 
the  form  of  slander,  and  assassinates  the 
fair  fame  of  his  moral,  intellectual,  and 
social  superior. 

Now  the  five  or  six  "  Prurient  Prudes  " 
who  defile  the  American  Press,  have  late- 
ly selected  me,  of  all  persons,  for  their 
victim.  They  are  trying  hard  to  make 
the  American  public  believe  twro  mon- 
strous falsehoods :  first,  that  they  are 
pure-minded  men  ;  secondly,  that  I  am 
an  impure  writer. 

Of  course,  if  these  five  or  six  "  Prurient 
Prudes  "  had  the  courage  to  do  as  I  do, 
sign  their  names  to  their  personalities, 
their  names  and  their  characters  would 
be  all  the  defense  I  should  need.  But, 
by  withholding  their  signatures  they  give 
the  same  weight  to  their  statements  that 
an  honest  man  gives  by  appending  his 
signature,  and  compel  me,  out  of  respect 
to  the  American  public,  whose  esteem  I 
value,  to  depart  from  the  usual  practice 
of  authors  in  my  position,  and  to  honor 
mere  literary  vermin  with  a  reply.  The 
case,  then,  stands  thus.  I  have  produced 
a  story  called  "  Griffith  Gaunt,  or  Jeal- 
ousy." This  story  has,  ever  since  De- 
cember, 1 865,  floated  The  Argosy,  an  En- 
glish periodical,  and  has  been  eagerly  read 
in  the  pages  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly. 
In  this  tale  I  have  to  deal,  as  an  artist 
and  a  scholar,  with  the  very  period 
Henrv  Fielding  has  described — to  the  sat- 


374 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


isf action  of  "Prurient  Prudes  ";  a  period 
in  which  manners  and  speech  were  some- 
what blunter  than  nowadays  ;  and  I  have 
to  portray  a  great  and  terrible  passion. 
Jealousy,  and  show  its  manifold  conse- 
quences, of  which  even  Bigamy  (in  my 
story)  is  one,  and  that  without  any  rio- 
lation  of  probability.  Then  I  proceed  to 
show  the  misery  inflicted  on  tbree  per- 
sons by  Bigamy,  which  I  denounce  as  a 
crime.     In  my  double  character  of  moral- 

:  artist,  I  present,  not  the  delusive 
shadow  of  Bigamy,  but  its  substance. 
The  consequence  is.  thai  instead  of  shed- 
ding a  mild  luster  over  Bigamy,  1  lill  my 

3  wit  h  a  horror  of  Big 

again  si  my  princi- 
pal male  character,  so  far  as  1  have  show  n 
him.  ( )t  course  "  <  J-riffil  h  <  taunt,"  like 
••Hard  Cash.*'  is  no1    a   child's  book,  nor 

e  giri*s  book  :  ii  is  an  ambitious 
story,  in  which  I  pres<  i  a1  pas- 

sions i  iiat  poets  ha  v  e  sung  wii  b  applause 
m  all  ages;  it  is  nol  a  boatful  <>f  pap; 
bu1  1  am  not  paid  the  price  of  pap.  By 
the  very  nature  of  my  theme  1  have  been 
compelled  now  and  then  to  tread  on  deli- 
cate ground:  bu1  I  have  trodden  lightly 
and  passed  on  swiftly,  and  so  will  all  the 
pure-minded  men  and  women  who  read 
me.  No  really  modest  woman  will  ever 
sutler  any  taint  by  reading  "G 
Gaunt,"  miles-,  indeed,  she  returns  to  its 
perusal,  unsexed,  and  filled  with  prurient 
curiosity,  by  the  foul  interpret;! 
the  "Prurient,  Prudes.*'  Then  come  a 
handful  of  scribblers,  win- 
loose    and    their    conversation   ol 

they  take  my  text,  and  read  it.  not  by  its 
own  light,  but  by  the  light  of  their  own 
foul  imaginations  ;  and.  having  so  defiled 
it  by  mixing  their  own  filthy  minds  with 
it .  they  sit  in  judgment  on  tlie  compound. 
To  these  impostors  I  say  no  more.  The 
two  words,  "Prurient  Prude.'*  will  soon 
run  round  the  Union,  and  render  its  citi- 
zens somewhat  less  gullible  by  thai  class 
of  impostor.  One  person,  however,  has 
slandered  me  so  maliciously  and  so  busily, 
that  I  am  compelled  to  notice  him  in- 
dividually, the  more  so  as  I  am  about  to 
sue  an  English  weekly  for  merely  quoting 
him.     The  editor  of  a  New  York  weekly 


called  The  Round  Table  has  printed  a 
mass  of  scurrility  direct  and  vicarious  to 
this  purport  : 

1.  That    "Griffith   Gaunt**    is   an  in- 

decent publication  : 

2.  That  it  is  immoral ; 

3.  That,  like  other  novelists,  the  author 

deals   in    adultery,    bigamy,    and 
nameless  social  crimes ; 

4.  But  that,  unlike  the  majority  of  my 

predecessors,  I  side  with  the  crimes 
I  depict  : 

5.  Thai     the    modesty    and    purity    of 

women  cannot  survive  the  perusal 
of  "Griffith  daunt  "  ; 

6.  That     this    story   was    declined    by 

some  of    the    lowesl     sensational 

weekly    papers    of   New   York,    on 

the  ground  flmf  they  did  not  dare 
to  undertake  its  publication. 
;.   Passing  from    personal  to  vicarious 
nder,  he  prints  the  letter  of  an 
animal  calling  itself  <  '.  S.  11 ..  who 
si  -  t  hal  some  interior  writer 
■    ••  Griffith  <  'aunt .'"  and  that 
1  leni  my  name  to  m  for  a  foreign 
market,  and  so  he  and  I  combined 
.  indie   the    Boston    publish- 
This.   in    England, 
felony. 
Now.  sir,  1  have  often  known  so 
scure  dunce,  who   had    the  advanl 
concealing  his  nameless  name,  treat   an 
esteemed   author  with   lofty  contempt  in 
the    columns    of    a    journal,  and  call    his 
masterpiece  a  sorry  production.      I  myself 

am  well  accustomed  to  that  sort  of  iu- 
and  insolence  from  scribblers,  who 
could  not  write  my  smallest  chapter,  to 
save  their  carcasses  from  the  gallows,  and 
their  souls  from  premature  damnation. 
But  the  spite  and  vanity  of  our  inferiors 
in  the  great,  profound,  and  difficult  art 
of  writing,  are  generally  satisfied  by  call- 
ing us  dunces,  and  bunglers,  and  cox- 
combs, and  that  sort  of  thing. 

In  all  my  experience  I  never  knew  the 
Press  guilty  of  such  a  crime  as  the  editor 
of  The  Round  Table  has  committed.  It 
is  a  deliberate  attempt  to  assassinate  the 
moral  character  of  an  author  and  a 
gentleman,  and  to  stab  the  ladies  of  his 
own    family  to    the    heart,   under    pre- 


READIANA. 


375 


tense  of  protecting  the  women  of  a 
nation  from  the  demoralizing-  influence 
of  his  pen. 

Yon  will  see  at  once  that  I  could  not 
hold  any  communication  with  The  Round 
Table  or  its  editor,  and  I  must,  therefore, 
trust  to  American  justice  and  generosity, 
and  ask  leave  to  reply  in  respectable 
columns. 

In  answer  to  statements  1,2,  4,  and  5, 
I  pledge  the  honor  of  a  gentleman  that 
they  are  deliberate  and  intentional  false- 
hoods, and  I  undertake  to  prove  this 
before  twelve  honest  American  citizens, 
sworn  to  do  justice  between  man  and 
man. 

As  to  No.  3,  I  really  scarce  know  what 
my  slanderer  means.  Griffith  Gaunt, 
under  a  delusion,  commits  Bigamy  :  and 
of  course  Bigamy  may  by  a  slight  perver- 
sion of  terms  be  called  Adultery.  But  no 
truthful  person,  attacking  character, 
would  apply  both  terms  to  a  single  act. 
Is  Bigamy  more  than  Polygamy  ?  And 
is  Polygamy  called  that,  and  Adultery 
too,  in  every  district  of  the  United 
States  ? 

As  to  "the  nameless  social  crimes," 
what  does  the  beast  mean  ?  Did  he  find 
these  in' his  own  foul  imagination,  or  did 
he  find  them  in  my  text  ?  If  it  was  in  the 
latter,  of  course  he  can  point  to  the  page. 
He  shall  have  an  opportunity. 

Statement  6,  is  a  lie  by  way  of  equivo- 
cation. The  truth  is,  that  before  '•Grif- 
fith Gaunt "  was  written,  an  agent  of 
mine  proposed  to  me  to  sound  some  news- 
paper proprietors,  who  had  hitherto 
stolen  my  works,  as  to  whether  they 
would  like  to  buy  a  story  of  me,  instead 
of  stealing  it.  I  consented  to  this  pre- 
liminary question  being  put,  and  I  don't 
know  what  they  replied  to  my  agent. 
Probably  the  idea  of  buying,  where  they 
had  formed  a  habit  of  stealing,  was  dis- 
tasteful to  them.  But  this  you  may  rely 
on,  that  I  never  submit  a  line  of  manu- 
script to  the  judgment  of  any  trader 
whatever,  either  in  England  or  in 
America,  and  never  will.  Nothing  is  ever 
discussed  between  a  trader  and  me  ex- 
cept the  bulk  and  the  price.  The  price  is 
sometimes  a  high  one  ;  but  always  a  fair 


one,  founded  on  my  sales.  If  he  has  not 
the  courage  to  pay  it,  all  the  worse  for 
him.  If  he  has,  the  bargain  is  signed, 
and  then  and  not  till  then,  he  sees  the 
copy. 

I  never  intrusted  a  line  of  "Griffith 
Gaunt  "to  an  agent.  I  never  sent  a  line 
of  it  across  the  Atlantic  to  any  human 
being,  except  to  the  firm  of  Ticknor  & 
Fields :  and  even  to  that  respectable 
firm,  one  of  the  partners  in  which  is  my 
valued  friend,  I  did  not  send  a  line  of  it 
until  they  had  purchased  of  me  the  right 
to  publish  it  in  the  United  States.  And 
this  purchase  was  made  on  the  basis  oi' 
an  old  standing  agreement. 

Compare  these  facts  with  the  impres- 
sion a  miserable  prevaricator  has  sought 
to  create,  to  wit,  that  the  proprietor  of 
some  low  journal  was  allowed  to  read  the 
manuscript,  or  unpublished  sheets,  of 
•'  Griffith  Gaunt,"  and  declined  it  on  the 
score  of  morality. 

Statement  ?,  which  accuses  me  of  a 
literary  felony,  is  a  deliberate,  inten- 
tional falsehood.  The  Argosy  is  sold  in 
New  York  in  great  numbers,  price  six- 
pence. The  editor  of  The  Round  Table 
is  aware  of  this,  and  has  seen  "  Griffith 
Gaunt  "  in  it,  with  my  name  attached  ; 
yet  he  was  so  bent  on  slandering  me  by 
hook  or  by  crook,  that  he  printed  the  let- 
ter of  G.  S.  H.  without  contradiction,  and 
so  turned  the  conjecture  of  a  mere  fool 
into  a  libel  and  a  lie. 

I  shall  only  add  that  I  mean  to  collar 
the  editor  of  The  Round  Table,  and  drag 
him  and  his  slanders  before  a  jury  of  his 
countrymen.  He  thinks  there  is  no  law, 
justice,  or  humanity  for  an  Englishman 
in  the  great  United  States.  We  shall 
see. 

Pending  the  legal  inquiry,  I  earnestly 
request  my  friends  in  the  United  States 
to  let  me  know  who  this  editor  of  The 
Round  Table  is,  and  all  about  him,  that 
so  we  may  meet  on  fair  terms  before 
the  jury. 

All  editors  of  American  journals  who 
have  any  justice,  fair  play,  or  common 
humanity  to  spare  to  an  injured  stranger, 
will  print  this  letter,  in  which  one  man 
defends  himself  against  many  ;  and  will 


376 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


be  good  enough  to  accept  my  thanks  for 
the  same  in  this  writing. 

Charles  Reade. 
3  Albert  Terrace. 

Hyde  Park,  London. 

P.  S. — I  demand  as  my  right  the  un- 
divided honor  of  all  the  insults  that  have 
been  misdirected  against  Messrs.  Ticknor 
&  Fields,  of  Boston.  Those  gentlemen 
have  had  no  alternative:  they  could  not 
bow  to  slander,  and  discontinue  "  <  rriffith 
Gaunt  "  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  with- 
out breaking  faith  with  me,  and  driving 
their  subscribers  to  The  Argosy.  The 
whole  credit,  and  discredit,  of  "  Griffith 
Gaunt,"  my  masterpiece,  belongs  to  me, 
its  sole  author,  and  original  vender. 


SECOND-HAND    LIBEL 

To  Till     EDITOB   "1    Till      ■  I  rLOBE." 

Sir — You  have  read  my  letter  to  the 
American  Press,  cited  one  paragraph, 
and  perverted  that  from  its  true  inten- 
tion, by  surpressing  its  context.  By  this 
means  you  exaggerate  my  arrogance, 
and  stir  the  bile  of  the  publishers.  I 
must  request  you  to  be  more  scrupu- 
lous, and  to  print  the  whole  truth.  The 
Round  Table  had  stated  that  '"Griffith 
Gaunl  '  was  declined  by  some  of  the 
lowest  sensational  weekly  papers  of  New 
York,  on  the  ground  that  they  did  not 
dare  to  undertake  its  publication.'"  This 
was  a  monstrous  piece  of  insolence;  and 
I  had  to  show  a  distant  public  that  it 
must  be  a  falsehood.  But  this  I  had  no 
means  whatever  of  doing,  except  by  re- 
vealing my  real  way  of  treating  with 
traders  at  home  and  abroad.  You  are 
welcome  to  blarney  the  publishers  by 
telling  them  that  artists  (penny-a-liners 
excepted)  write  for  money,  but  publishers 
publish  for  glory.     I  cannot  go  quite  this 


length  with  you,  not  wanting  their  ad- 
vertisements ;  but  still  I  do  not  wish  to 
affront  these  gentlemen  without  provoca- 
tion, and  so  I  insist  on  your  printing  this 
explanation,  which  your  own  disingenu- 
ousness  has  rendered  necessary. 

On  the  17th  October  "  Griffith  Gaunt  " 
was. published  in  three  volumes;  on  the 
19th  a  copy  was  probably  in  your  hands. 
On  that  day  you  revived  and  circulated  a 
slander  that  tends  to  injure  its  sale  very 
seriously,  and  to  destroy  the  personal 
character  of  its  author:  you  announced  in 
your  columns  that  "an  American  critic 
declares  the  story  to  be  indecent  and 
immoral;  and  that,  on  this  point,  hav- 
ing vainly  attempted  to  read  it,  i/ou  of- 
ft  r  ii"  opinion." 

Now  it  may  be  very  polite  of  cold 
hashed  niuiidii  to  affecl  a  singular  con- 
tempt for  venison  :  but  in  your  case  it 
is  in. t  reasonable;  you  are  familiar  with 
drudgery;  you  contrive  1<>  read  dozens  of 
novels  that  are  the  very  offal  of  the 
human  mind;  ay,  and  to  praise  them 
i<>".      Sou    know   why. 

Now,  advertisements  area  line  thing; 
but  justice  is  a  liner,  whatever  you  may 
think.  And  just  ire  required  of  you  either 
to  hold  your  tongue  about  "'Griffith 
Gaunt,"  or  else  to  read  it. 

I!ut  even  assuming  thai  you  really  had 
not  tin'  brains  to  read  "Griffith  Gaunt" 
for  pleasure,  nor  yet  the  self-respect  and 
prudence  to  wade  through  it  before  lend- 
ing your  columns  to  its  defamation,  at 
least  you  have  read  my  letter  to  the 
American  press  :  and,  having  read  that, 
you  cannot  but  suspect  this  charge  of 
immorality  and  indecency  to  be  a  libel 
and  a  lie.  Yet  you  have  circulated  the 
calumny  all  the  same,  and  suppressed  the 
refutation. 

I  am  afraid  the  truth  is.  you  have  got 
into  your  head  that  the  law  will  allow 
you  to  indulge  a  perverse  disposition,  by 
defaming  and  blackening  the  moral  char- 
acter of  a  respected  author,  provided  you 
use  another  man's  blacking.  Pure  chime- 
ra !  The  law  draws  no  such  distinction. 
It  serves  tale-bearers  with  the  same  sauce 
as  tale-makers ;  it  protects  honest  men 
alike   against    the    originators    and    the 


READIAXA. 


377 


reckless  circulators  of  calumny.  Believe 
me,  your  only  chances  to  avoid  very 
serious  consequences  are  two  :  you  must 
either  meet  me  before  a  jury,  and  justify 
the  American  libel  you  have  Anglicized 
and  circulated  ;  or  else  you  must  contra- 
dict it  at  once,  and  apologize  to  the  man 
you  have  wronged.  I  offer  j-ou  three 
days,  to  read  "  Griffith  Gaunt  "  and  de- 
cide upon  your  course.  If,  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  you  do  not  distinctly  and  cate- 
gorically state  that  ;'  Griffith  Gaunt  "  is 
not  an  indecent  and  immoral  book — and 
apologize  to  its  author -I  shall  sue  the 
proprietor  of  the  Globe,  as  I  am  suing 
the  proprietor  of  the  London  Review, 
for  composing  and  printing  an  American 
libel  with  English  type,  and  then  publish- 
ing and  selling  it  in  English  columns  ;  in 
other  words,  for  collecting  foreign  dirt 
with  English  hands,  and  flinging  it  upon 
the  personal  character  of  an  Engligh 
citizen.  Charles  Reade. 

5  Albert  Terrace, 

October  22d.  1866. 

The  editor  of  the  Globe  having  made 
public  comments  on  this  letter,  yet  kept 
the  letter  private,  the  writer  requests 
less  unscrupulous  editors  to  repair  this 
injustice. 


"  FACTS    MUST   BE   FACED," 

To  the  Editor  of  the  •■  Times." 

Sir— The  Times  of  the  24th  of  August 
contains  a  notice  of  "A  Terrible  Temp- 
tation," done  upon  a  newT  plan.  It  is  a 
careful  synopsis  of  all  the  main  incidents 
in  my  story,  only  my  abridger  has  di- 
vested them  of  every  charm.  It  is  rather 
hard  my  name  should  be  attached  to  a 
bad  story  told  by  another  man  when  I 
have  told  a  goodish  one  with  the  same 
materials ;    but  I  console  myself  by  re- 


flecting that  the  same  ingenious  process 
applied  to  "  Homer's  Iliad  "  would  prove  it 
a  contemptible  work.  There  is  some!  lung 
more  serious,  reflecting  on  me  both  as  a 
writer  and  a  man,  which  I  cannot  leave 
uncontradicted  in  columns  so  powerful  as 
yours.  My  abridger  has  said  that  I  have 
written  about  things  which  should  not 
be  spoken  of,  much  less  written  about — 
alluding  to  my  sketch  of  Rlioda  Somerset 
— and  that  innocent  girls  ought  not  to  be 
informed  on  such  subjects.  He  even  hints 
t  hat  mothers  would  do  well  to  forbid  my 
first  volume  to  their  unmarried  daugh- 
ters. You  must  admit,  sir,  this  is  a  very 
serious  thing  to  say  in  print,  and  very 
cruel  to  a  writer  of  my  age ;  then  do, 
please,  give  me  fair  play  for  once,  and  let 
me  be  heard  in  reply.  The  character  of 
Rhoda  Somerset  was  not  invented  by  me, 
but  copied  from  a  master  hand.  It  was 
you  who  first  introduced  her,  ponies  and 
all,  to  the  public,  on  the  third  day  of 
July,  1862,  in  an  admirable  letter,  headed 
"Anonyma."  On  another  occasion  you 
discussed  the  whole  subject,  day  after 
day,  in  leaders  and  avast  correspondence, 
so  that  for  one  lady  who  knows  about 
the  demi-monde  from  my  pages,  twenty 
know  a  great  deal  more  from  yours. 
Should  this  lose  you  the  esteem  of 
my  abridger,  permit  me  to  offer  you, 
as  a  small  substitute,  the  thanks  of  a  bet- 
ter judge.  You  did  your  duty  to  the 
public  in  1862,  as  you  had  often  done  it 
before,  and  were  true  to  your  own  in- 
valuable maxim,  "  Facts  must  be  faced." 
For  18  years,  at  least,  the  journal  you 
conduct  so  ably  has  been  my  preceptor, 
and  the  main  source  of  my  works — at  all 
events  of  the  most  approved.  A  noble 
passage  in  the  Times  of  September  7  or 
S,  1853,  touched  my  heart,  inflamed  my 
imagination,  and  was  the  germ  of  my  first 
important  work,  "  It  is  Never  Too  Late 
to  Mend."  That  column,  a  monument 
of  head,  heart,  and  English,  stands  now 
dramatized  in  my  pages,  and  embellishes 
the  work  it  had  inspired.  Some  years 
later  you  put  forth  an  able  and  eloquent 
leader  on  private  asylums,  and  detailed 
the  sufferings  there  inflicted  on  persons 
known  to  you.     This  took  root  in  me,  and 


378 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READS. 


brought  forth  its  fruit  in  the  second  vol- 
ume of  "  Hard  Cash."  Later  still,  your 
hearty  and  able,  but  temperate  leaders, 
upon  trades  unions  and  trade  outrages 
incited  me  to  an  ample  study  of  that 
great  subject,  so  fit  for  fiction  of  the 
higher  order,  though  not  adapted  to 
the  narrow  minds  of  bread-and-butter 
misses,  nor  of  the  criticasters  who  echo 
those  young  ladies"  idea  of  fiction  and 
its  limits,  and  thus  "Put  Yourself  in 
His  Place'"  was  written.  Of  "A  Terri- 
ble Temptation,"  the  leading  idea  came 
to  me  from  the  limes — viz.,  from  the  re- 
port of  a  certain  trial,  with  the  comments 
of  counsel,  and  the  remarkable  judgment 
delivered  by  Mr.  Jus:  ice  Byles.  The 
ber  of  Rhoda  Somerset  1  culled 
from  your  pages,  and  having  observed 
with  what    firmness,    j  3S,    you 

t  reated  thai  .1  have 

kept    your   method   in    view,    and.    ai    all 
events,  tried   to   imitate    it.      W 
warmth   1  have  shown   is  in  the  scenes  of 
virtuous  love:  iii  the  Somerset's  scenes  I 
am  cold  and  sarcastic.     Up  to  the  period 

Of     her     repentance     QOW    do     1     t  re :,  I     tins 

character?  Do  I  whitewash  the  hussy. 
or  make  her  a  well-bred,  delicate-minded 
woman,  as  your  refined  and  immoral 
writers  would?  T  present  her  ill 
coarse,  vain,  with  good  impulses,  a  bad 
temper,  and  a  Billings-ate  bongue.  In 
close  contrasl  to  this  unattractive  photo- 
graph I  am  careful  bo  place  my  portrail 
of  an  English  virgin,  drawn  in  the  sweet- 
est colors  my  rude  art  can  command, 
thai  every  honest  reader  may  see  on 
which  side  my  sympathies  lie.  and  be  at- 
tracted bo  virtue  by  the  road  of  compari- 
son. Believe  me,  sir.  a  thousand  innocent 
girls  are  at  this  moment  being  corrupted 
by  writers  of  their  own  sex.  with  novels 
instinctively  adapted  to  the  female  reader, 
to  her  excessive  sexuality,  and  her  sense 
of  propriety.  These  writers,  being  wo- 
men, know  how  to  work  on  the  former 
without  alarming  the  latter,  and  so,  by 
fine  degrees  and  with  soft  insidious  per- 
tinacity, they  reconcile  their  female 
readers  to  illicit  love,  and  shed  a  mild 
luster  over  adultery  itself.  Yet  so  desti- 
tute of  the  true  critical   faculty  are  the 


criticasters  of  the  day  that  these  canny 
corruptersof  female  youth  escape  ci 
it  has  gone  astray  after  a  writer  in  whose 
hands  vice  startles  and  offends,  not  cap- 
tivates. My  pen  has  never  corrupted  a 
soul ;  it  never  will,  it  never  can,  till  water 
shall  run  uphill. 

Should  this  argument  fall  into  abler 
hands  than  an  abridger'Sj  1  expect  to  be 
told,  not  that  it  is  the  duly  of  all  writers 
to  ignore  certain  \  ices,  and  so  do  their 
hestto  perpetuate  them,  hut  that  many 
subjects  open  to  the  journalist  at-e  closed 
to  the  novelist.  This  is  true  and  reason- 
i  is-  journals  must .  of 
necessity,  report  in  their  small  type  some 
crimes  ami  vices  quite  unfit  to  be  men- 
ii  a  novel  :  1ml  1  hal  a  journalist 
lias  any  right  to  put  into  his  leaded  type 
an, i  to  ampnly.  discuss,  and  dwell  upon 
any  subject  whatever,  and  that  the  poet 
or  the  novelist  has  not  an  equal  right  to 
deal  with  thai  subject  in  fiction,  this  is 
monstrous  and  the  mere  delusion  of  a 
rabid  egotism. 

.  1  have  taken  Anonynia 
from  your  hands  and  have  presented  her 
in  no  voluptuous  scenes,  and  have  made 
her  a  repulsive  character  until  she  repents, 
no  mother  need  forbid  my  book  to  her 
daughter:  at  all  events,  until  she  litis 
forbidden  her  daughters  to  enter  Hyde 
Park  and  the  Times  u>  enter  her  draw- 
ing-room, and  has  locked  up  every  Bible 
on  her   premises. 

1  have  t  he  honor  to  be 

Your  obedient  servant  and  pupil, 
Charles  Beade. 
2  Albert  Terrace.  Knightsbridge, 
it  26th,  1871. 


Sir— Those  who  read  the  late  contro- 
versy between  the  Times  and  me  must,  I 
think,  have  been  surprised  and  somewhat 
shocked — if  they  admire  the  Times  as 
much  as  I  do — at  its  rude  and  ungener- 
ous reply  to  a  courteous  letter,  in  which 
I  taught  it  that  great  lesson  of  superior 
minds— appreciation.      A   retort   so  con- 


READIAXA. 


379 


ceited,  so  silly,  and  so  rude,  entitled  me 
to  a  reply.  I  sent  a  short  one  ;  it  is  sup- 
pressed. This  is  foul  play  :  and,  as  En- 
glishmen in  general  abhor  foul  play,  I 
venture  to  ask  you  to  give  publicity  to 
these  few  lines,  which,  mild  as  they  are, 
the  editor  of  the  Times  had  not  the  cour- 
age to  face. 

"FACTS  MUST  BE  FACED." 

Sir — My  generous  tribute  to  the  Times 
referred  to  those  able  men  who  write  in 
the  Times  on  public  questions — not  to  the 
small  fry,  who  write  about  literature  be- 
cause they  cannot  write  literature.  I 
touched  my  hat  to  the  Tritons  of  the 
Times,  not  to  the  minnows  :  yet  one  of 
these  latter  has  coolly  adopted  the  com- 
pliment, and  actually  made  it  a  handle 
for  impertinence  that  out.rag-es  truth  and 
common  decency.  This  is  base ;  and  I 
wonder  you  could  be  betrayed  into  lend- 
ing your  name  to  it.  Where  gentlemen 
are  concerned,  appreciation  on  the  one 
side  begets  decent  civility  on  the  other. 
I  shall  not  descend  to  bandy  invectives 
with  my  inferior,  but  shall  pick  his  one 
grain  of  argument  out  of  his  peck  of  scur- 
rility. I  have  driven  him  from  his  first 
position,  which  was,  that  nobody  ought 
to  print  anything  about  Anonyma.  Now 
that  he  finds  who  first  introduced  her  to 
the  public,  he  sings  quite  another  song. 
"  Journals,"  says  he,  "  deal  in  such  facts 
as  these,  but  not  in  fictions."  This  is  a 
distinction  without  a  difference.  It  does 
not  matter  one  straw  whether  a  young 
lady  reads  facts  about  Anonyma,  or  fig- 
ments founded  on  facts,  for  the  effect  on 
her  mind  is  precisely  the  same  in  both 
cases.  The  distinction  is  not  only  mud- 
dle-headed, but  inapplicable ;  for  the 
Times  has  done  a  little  fiction  in  this 
thing.  .Of  the  letters  printed  in  the 
Times  about  the  Demi-monde,  a  good 
many  were  written  to  order  by  the  staff 
of  the  Times.,  though  signed  "Pater- 
familias," "A  Belgravian  Mother,"  or 
what  not.  Xow  that  is  fiction — fiction 
as  pure  as  anything  in  "  A  Terrible 
Temptation.'"  The  late  Mr.  Joseph  Ad- 
dison  did  mightily  affect  this  form ;  he 


wrote  himself  letters  from  coquettes  and 
other  sprightly  correspondents,  and  so 
enlivened  his  didactic  columns  ;  for  Fiction 
improves  whatever  it  touches.  Your  re- 
viewer now  hangs  to  his  chimera  by  one 
thread.  "Ours,"  says  he,  "are  public 
duties;  his  are  private."  So  much  for 
young  gentlemen  writing  about  litera- 
ture with  no  knowledge  of  the  business. 
"Private!"  Why,  my  English  circula- 
tion is  larger  than  that  of  the  Times ; 
and  in  the  United  States  three  publishers 
have  already  sold  three  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand  copies  of  this  novel — 
which,  I  take  it,  is  about  thirty  times  the 
circulation  of  the  Times  in  the  United 
States,  and  nearly  six  times  its  English 
circulation. 

Writing  for  so  vast  a  variety  of  human 
beings,  for  more  than  one  great  nation, 
and  for  more  than  one  generation.  I 
cannot  afford  to  adopt  novel  and  narrow 
views  of  my  great  art ;  I  cannot  consent 
to  make  myself,  by  artificial  contraction, 
smaller  than  the  journalists.  The  world 
is  big  enough  for  a  few  creators  as  well 
as  for  a  shoal  of  commentators.  I  do  not 
howl  because  two  thousand  journalists 
deal,  in  their  leaded  type,  with  Lunacy, 
Prisons,  Trades  Unions,  Divorce,  Murder, 
Anonyma,  and  other  great  facts ;  and 
those  who  aspics  to  represent  so  large  a 
body  of  sensible  men,  should  bridle  their 
egotism,  discourage  their  pitiable  jeal- 
ousy, and  cease  to  howl  because  five  or 
six  masters  of  Fiction  have  the  judgment 
and  the  skill  to  weave  the  recorded  facts, 
and  published  characters,  of  this  great 
age,  into  the  forms  of  Art. 

Your  obedient  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 


DIALOGUE    BETWEEN    A  JUDGE 
AND  A  JAILER. 

To  the  Editor  op  the  "  Daily  Telegraph." 

Sir — At    Christmas   imagination    runs 
rife  ;  Pantomimes  threaten,  wherein  Wis- 


380 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


dom  will  be  kept  within  bounds  by  Fancy; 
and  even  in  your  columns  I  have  just 
read  a  Dream,  and  found  it  interesting-. 
.May  I  then  profit  by  your  temporary 
leniency  and  intrude  into  the  sacred  Tele- 
graph a  dialogue  ?  It  is  imaginary,  but 
not  idle  :  it  may  do  good,  and  make 
Power  think  instead  of  thinking  it  thinks 
— a  common  but  hurtful  habit. 


Scene— 77/*'  Old  Bailey. 

The  Judge.  Is  the  jailer  presenl  ? 

Mr.  Holdfast.  Eere,  my  lord. 

Judge.  I  sentence  this  man  to  four 
months' imprisonment,  with  hard  labor: 
you  understand  ? 

Holdfast.  Perfectly,  my  lord.  You 
mean  unwholesome  labor,  as  much  as  he 
can  do  and  a  little  more.  So  then,  when 
be  falls  short,  we  reduce  his  diet  to  in- 
crease  tiis  strength,  since  it  has  proved 
unequal  ;  I  his  to  be  conl  inued  in  a  circle, 
and  take  his  bed  every  now  and  i 
le1  him  Lie  on  a  plank. 

Judge.  What  :  hard  labor,  yet  short 
diet,  with  the  addition  of  cold  at  nighl 
and  broken  rest  !  Why,  this  is  not  De- 
tention, it  is  Destruction— either  to  man 
-• ,  No.  sir.  I  do  not  condemn  this 
man  to  imprisonment  for  lift — he  is  no!  a 
murderer — I  give  him  just  four  months. 
no  more,  no  less  :  and  in  that  sentence  it 
is  clearly  implied   thai  at  the  end  of  four 

months  he  is  to  co out,  improved  in 

his  habits  by  labor,  and  in  his  body  by 
regular  meals,  of  simple,  nourishing  food, 
with  no  alcohol. 

Holdfast.  Excuse  me,  my  lord  :  the 
Act  of  Parliament  authorizes  a  jailer  to 
reduce  a  prisoner's  diet,  and  inflict  other 
punishments. 

Judge.  Ay.  at  safe  intervals:  but  not 
in  quick  repetition,  nor  in  unreasonable 
conjunction — bard  labor  on  the  heels  of 
privation,  and  cold  on  the  top  of  both. 
These  things  united  soon  exhaust  the 
body.  Your  Act  of  Parliament  contains 
no  clause,  that  can  be  road  in  a  court  of 
law.  to  repeal  the  law  of  England  regard- 
ing so  great  a  matter  as  homicide.  That 
immortal  law.   which    was    here    before 


these  little  trumpery  Acts  of  Parliament, 
made  to-day  to  be  repealed  to-inorrow, 
and  will  be  here  after  Parliament  itself 
has  run  its  course,  deals  with  the  case 
thus  :  If  A,  having  the  legal  charge  of 
B,  and  keeping  him  in  dures.se.  so  that 
he  cannot  possibly  obtain  the  necessaries 
of  life  elsewhere,  subjects  him  to  priva- 
tion of  food,  rest,  etc.,  and  otherwise  so 
shortens  his  life  directly  or  indirectly  by 
sheer  exhaustion  of  the  body,  or  by  any 
Lsease  which  is  a  natural  result  of  mul- 
tiplied privations  and  hardships,  A  can 
be  indicted  for  a  felony  :  and  be  will  be 
tried,  not  by  an\  officer  of  State  assum- 
ing unconstitutional  powers,  tint  consti- 
tutionally, by  the  queen  in  the  person  of 
lei'  judge,  and  bj  the  country  in  the 
person  of  its  jury. 

Holdfast.  They  would  never  find  a 
jailer  guilty,  not  if  a  dozen  of  the  scum 
died  in  their  term  of  imprisonment. 

Judge.  It  is  not  for  me  to  say.  They 
are  getting  more  intelligent,  like  the  rest 
of  us.  Certainly  it,  would  be  their  duty 
to  demand  good  evidence,  and  the  true 
facts  are  hard  to  gel  at  in  a  jail.  Acton 
and  Fleetwood  destroyed  many  prisoners, 
vet  were  acquitted  on  trial.  But  at  all 
events  dismiss  from  your  mind  that  a 
jailer  can  plead  the  Act  of  Parliament, 
■  a-  any  purelj  legal  defense,  to  bloodless 
destruction  of  a  British  subject  in  du- 
resse. Keep  strictly  to  my  sentence.  It 
is  not  only  the  sentence  of  the  queen 
and  the  law,  but  it  is  expressly  propor- 
tioned  to  the  verdict  of  the  country. 
Four  months  in  a  house  of  detention, 
not  destruction,  a  house  of  correction, 
not  a  subtle  shambles.  The  sentence  has 
two  limits,  both  equally  absolute.  If, 
during  the  four  months,  you  turn  this 
man  into  the  street,  you  are  indictable 
for  a  misdemeanor:  if.  during  the  four 
months,  you  thrust  him  eannily,  into  his 
grave,  you  are  indictable  for  a  felonyr ; 
and,  should  I  be  the  judge  to  try  you, 
it  will  be  my  duty  to  tell  the  jury  that 
you  took  this  prisoner,  not  from  the 
clouds,  nor  from  any  Government  offi- 
cial, with  no  power  to  sentence  man, 
woman,  nor  child,  where  I  sit,  but  from 
me ;    and  that  I  sentenced  him,  in  your 


READIANA. 


381 


hearing-,  to  four  months'  imprisonment, 
and  not  to  imprisonment  for  life. 
I  am,  sir, 

Your  obedient  servant, 
Charles  Reade. 
Knightsbridge,  Christmas  Day. 


NOTE  TO  A   SICK    FRIEND. 

My  friend,  with  age  come  grief  and  care 

To  every  son  of  man, 
Sickness  or  sorrow,  hard  to  hear, 

Though  life  is  but  a  span. 

Since  last  we  met,  my  heart  has  bled, 

And  will  bleed  till  I  die  ; 
And  you,  confined  to  a  sick  bed, 

In  pain  and  languor  lie. 

We  all  should  do  the  best  we  may 

To  cheer  a  friend  in  need. 
Expect  to-morrow,  or  next  day, 
A  visit  from 

Charles  Reade. 
19  Albert  Gate,  Knightsbridge. 


A   BAD   FALL. 

To  the  Editor  of  "  Fact." 

Sir — I  sometimes  get  provoked  with 
the  British  workman — and  say  so.  He 
comes  into  my  house  to  do  a  day's  work, 
and  goes  out  again  to  fetch  the  tool  he 
knew  he  should  want,  and  he  does  not 
come  back  till  after  breakfast.  Then  I 
think  I  have  got  him.  But  no  ;  he  sharp- 
ens his  tools  and  goes  out  for  a  whet. 
Even  when  he  is  at  work  he  is  always  go- 
ing into  the  kitchen  for  hot  water,  or  a 
hot  coal,  or  the  loan  of  a  pair  of  tongs,  or 
some  other  blind.  My  maids,  who,  be- 
fore he  came,  were  all  industry  and  mock 


modesty,  throw  both  these  virtues  out  of 
window,  and  are  after  him  on  the  roof, 
when  he  is  not  after  them  in  the  kitchen. 
They  lose  their  heads  entirely,  and  are 
not  worth  their  salt,  far  less  their  wages, 
till  he  is  gone,  and  that  is  always  a  terri- 
bly long  time,  considering-  how  little  he 
has  to  do.  For  these  reasons,  and  be- 
cause whenever  he  has  been  out  on  my 
roof,  the  rain  comes  in  next  heavy  shower, 
1  have  permitted  myself  to  call  him  in 
print  •''  the  curse  of  families." 

Then  he  strikes,  and  combines,  and 
speechifies,  and  calls  the  capital,  that 
feeds  him,  his  enemy ;  and  sometimes 
fights  with  the  capital  of  a  thousand 
against  the  capital  of  a  single  master, 
and  overpowers  it,  yet  calls  that  a  fight 
of  labor  against  capital.  Then  he  de- 
mands short  time,  which  generally  means 
more  time  to  drink  in,  and  higher  wages, 
which  often  means  more  money  to  drink 
with.  Thereupon  I  lose  my  temper,  rush 
into  print,  and  call  the  British  workman 
the  British  talk-man  and  the  British  drink- 
man. 

But  it  must  be  owned  all  this  is  rather 
narrow  and  shallow.  "Where  there's  a 
multitude  there's  a  mixture,"  and  a 
private  gentleman  in  my  position  does 
not  really  know  the  mass  of  the  workmen, 
and  their  invaluable  qualities. 

One  thing  is  notorious — that  in  their 
bargains  with  capital  they  are  very  len- 
ient in  one  respect,  they  charge  very  little 
for  their  lives  ;  yet  they  shorten  them  in 
many  trades,  and  lose  them  right  away 
in  some. 

Even  I,  who  have  been  hard  on  them  in 
some  things,  have  already  pointed  out 
that  instead  of  labor  and  capital  the 
trades  ought  to  speechify  on  life,  labor, 
and  capital ;  and  dwell  more  upon  their 
risks,  as  a  fit  subject  of  remuneration, 
than  their  professed  advocates  have  clone. 

Is  it  not  a  sad  thing-  to  reflect,  when 
you  see  the  scaffolding  prepared  for  some 
great  building  to  be  erected  either  for 
pious  or  mundane  purposes,  that  out  of 
those  employed  in  erecting  it  some  are 
sure  to  be  killed  ! 

All  this  prolixity  is  to  usher  in  a  simple 
fact,  which  interests  me  more  than  the 


382 


WORKS    OF     CHARLES  READE. 


petty  proceedings  of  exalted  personages, 
and  their  "migrations  from  the  blue  bed 
to  the  brown  '*  ;  and  some  of  your  readers 
aresure  to  be  of  my  mind. 

The  Princess's  Theater.  Oxford  Street, 
is  being  reconstructed.  The  walls,  far 
more  substantial  than  they  build  nowa- 
days, are  to  si  and.  but  the  old  interior  is 
demolished,  and  the  roof  heightened. 

Sullivan,  a  young  carpenter,  was  at 
work  with  his  fellows  on  a  stage  properly 
secured.  They  wanted  some  ropes  that 
lay  on  another  stage,  and  sent  him  for 
them.  Between  the  stage  was  a  plank, 
w  hich  he  naturally  I  houghl  had  be 
to  walk  on.  He  stepped  on  it — it  was 
only  a  half-mch  board.  It  snapped 
Ins  weight  Like  a  carrot,  and  be  fell 
through  in  a  momenl . 

He  caught  at  a  projection,  but  merely 
tore  his  fingers,  and  descended  into  space 

with  fearful  velocity. 
The  heighl  was  fifty  feel     rru  at 

The  i  Inn--  he  fell  on  w  as  a   hard  board, 
on   ham  ground.     Tie 
him  fall,  and  hearu  his  one  cry  of  horror, 
had  no  I  I  king  up  anvt  bing   from 

hut    a   battered  corpse 
with    broken    back,    fractured    ski 
shal  bered  ribs. 

Thirty-five  feet  below  the  place  he  fell 
from,  a  strong  holt,  about  an  inch  in 
diameter,  and  four  feet  long,  prot  ruded 
from  the  wall  almost  at  right  angles, 
but  with  a   slight  declension  downward. 

The  outer  end  of  this  protruding  iron 
just  caught  Sullivan  by  the  seat,  ripped 

up  his  clothes,  and  tore  his  back,  and 
partly  broke  his  fail.  Nevertheless,  such 
was  its  violence  that  he  bounded  up  from 
the  board  he  eventually  fell  upon,  and 
was  found  all  of  a  heap  in  a  hollow  place 
close  by,  senseless,  and  almost  pu  - 

He  was  taken  to  the  Middlesex  Hos- 
pital. There  he  came  to  his  senses  and 
his  trouble.  His  pulse  was  soon  over  10b. 
His  temperature  108 — a  very  alarming 
feature.  This,  however,  has  subsided,  and 
they  have  go1  his  pulse  to  98,  bul  lie  can- 
not eat ;  his  eyes  cannot  bear  the  light. 
There  are  one  or  more  severe  wounds 
upon  his  back  parts,  and  much  reason  to 
fear  injury  to  the  spinal  column.      He  is 


in  danger:  and,  if  he  survives,  which  I 
think  very  possible,  it  is  to  be  feared  lie 
will  never  lie  aide  to  walk  and  work  again. 
These,  sir.  are  the  dire  realities  of  life; 
and  very  lit  to  be  admitted  into  your 
graver  columns.  Here  is  a  sad  fact  and 
a  curious  fact. 

Sullivan  was  a  handsome  young  fellow, 
jnsi  beginning  t  he  world.  In  a  moment 
there  be  lies  a  cripple  and  a  wreck,  and 
thai  is  a  s;ol  thing  for  any  feeling  heart  to 
think  of.  The  bolt  which  saved  him  from 
immediate  death  is  a  curious  fact.  It  is 
still  to  be  seen  dangling  from  the  wall  as 
it  did,  when  it  ripped  up  the  workman's 
clothes,  furrowed  his  back,  and  broke  his 
fall. 

Will  it  prove  his  friend  or  his  enemy, 
thai  pieceofiron?  The  enemy  of  his  body 
if  it  makes  him  a  cripple  instead  of  a 
corpse;  but  the  friend  of  his  soul  if  he 
i-.  .-a  n  storj  righl  ;  w  berefore  I 
hope  some  servant  of  God  will  goto  Ins 
bedside  with  the  t  rue  balm  of  <  Mead. 
1  am  sir. 

Yours  faithfully, 

Chaki.es  Reads 

July,  1880. 


A    DRAMATIC     MUSICIAN. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "Era." 

Sir — There  died  the  other  day  in  Lon- 
don a  musician,  who  used  to  compose, 
good  music  to  orchestral  instru- 
ments, and  play  it  in  the  theater  with 
spirit  and  taste,  and  to  watch  the  stage 
with  one  eye  and  the  orchestra  with  an- 
other, and  so  accompany  with  vigilant 
delicacy  a  mixed  scene  of  action  and  dia- 
logue; to  do  which  the  music  must  be 
full  when  the  actor  works  in  silence,  but 
subdued  promptly  as  often  as  the  actor 
speaks.  Thus  it  enhances  the  action  with- 
out drowning  a  spoken  line. 


EEADIANA. 


383 


These  are  varied  gifts,  none  of  them 
common,  and  music  is  a  popular  art.  One 
would  think,  then,  that  such  a  composer 
and  artist  would  make  his  fortune  nowa- 
days. Not  so.  Mr.  Edwin  Ellis  lived 
sober,  laborious,  prudent,  respected,  and 
died  poor.  He  was  provident  and  insured 
his  life  ;  he  had  a  family  and  so  small  an 
income  that  he  could  not  keep  up  the  in- 
surance. He  has  left  a  wife  and  nine 
children  utterly  destitute,  and  he  could 
not  possibly  help  it.  The  kindest-hearted 
profession  in  the  world — though  burdened 
with  many  charitable  claims — will  do  what 
it  can  for  them  :  but  I  do  think  the  whole 
weight  ought  not  to  fall  upon  actors  and 
musicians.  The  man  was  a  better  ser- 
vant of  the  public  than  people  are  aware, 
and  therefore  I  ask  leave  to  say  a  few 
words  to  the  public  and  to  the  press 
over  his  ill-remunerated  art,  and  his  un- 
timely grave. 

Surely  the  prizes  of  the  theater  are 
dealt  too  unevenly,  when  such  a  man 
for  his  compositions  and  his  performance 
receives  not  half  the  salary  of  many  a 
third  class  performer  on  the  stage,  works 
his  heart  out,  never  wastes  a  shilling,  and 
dies  without  one. 

No  individual  is  to  blame  ;  but  the  sys- 
tem seems  indiscriminating  and  unjust, 
and  arises  from  a  special  kind  of  igno- 
rance, which  is  very  general,  but  I  think 
and  hope  is  curable. 

Dramatic  effects  are  singularly  com- 
plex, and  they  cannot  really  be  under- 
stood unless  they  are  decomposed.  But 
it  is  rare  to  find,  out  of  the  Theater,  a 
mind  accustomed  to  decompose  them. 
The  writer  is  constantly  blamed  for  the 
actor's  misinterpretation,  and  the  actor 
for  the  writer's  feebleness.  Indeed,  the 
general  inability  to  decompose  and  so 
discriminate  goes  so  far  as  this — You 
hear  an  author  gravely  accused  by  a 
dozen  commentators  of  writing  a  new 
play  four  hours  long.  Of  those  four 
hours  the  stage  carpenter  occupied  one 
hour  and  thirty  minutes.  Yet  they  as- 
cribe that  mechanic's  delay  to  the  lines 
and  delivery,  when  all  the  time  it  was 
the  carpenter,  who  had  not  rehearsed 
his  part,  and   therefore  kept  the  author 


and  the  actors  waiting  just  as  long  as 
he  did  the  audience. 

Where  the  habit  of  decomposing  effects 
is  so  entirely  absent,  it  follows,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  that  the  subtle  subsidiary 
art  of  the  able  leader  is  not  distinguished, 
and  goes  for  nothing  in  the  public  esti- 
mate of  a  play.  I  suppose  two  million 
people  have  seen  Shaun  the  Post  escape 
from  his  prison  by  mounting  the  ivied 
tower,  and  have  panted  at  the  view.  Of 
those  two  million  how  many  are  aware 
that  they  saw  with  the  ear  as  well  as  the 
eye,  and  that  much  of  their  emotion  was 
caused  by  a  mighty  melody,  such  as 
effeminate  Italy  never  produced — and 
never  will  till  she  breeds  more  men  and 
less  monks — being  played  all  the  time  on 
the  great  principle  of  climax,  swelling 
higher  and  higher,  as  the  hero  of  the 
scene  mounted  and  surmounted  ?  Not 
six  in  the  two  million  spectators,  I  be- 
lieve. Mr.  Ellis  has  lifted  scenes  and 
situations  for  me  and  other  writers  scores 
of  times,  and  his  share  of  the  effect  never 
been  publicly  noticed.  When  he  had  a 
powerful  action  or  impassioned  dialogue 
to  illustrate  he  did  not  habitually  run  to 
the  poor  resource  of  a  "hurry"  or  a 
nonsense  "tremolo,"  but  loved  to  find  an 
appropriate  melody,  or  a  rational  se- 
quence of  chords,  or  a  motived  strain, 
that  raised  the  scene  or  enforced  the 
dialogue.  As  to  his  other  qualities,  it 
was  said  of  Caesar  that  he  was  a  general 
who  used  not  to  say  to  his  soldiers  "go  " 
but  "come,"  and  that  is  how  Mr.  Ellis 
led  an  orchestra.  He  showed  them  how 
to  play  with  spirit  by  doing  it,  himself. 
He  was  none  of  your  sham  leaders  with 
a  baton,  but  a  real  leader  with  a  violin, 
that  set  his  band  on  fire.  A  little  while 
before  he  died  he  tried  change  of  air, 
by  the  kind  permission  of  Messrs.  Gatti, 
and  he  helped  me  down  at  Liverpool. 
He  entered  a  small  orchestra  of  good 
musicians  that  had  become  languid.  He 
waked  them  up  directly,  and  they  played 
such  fine  music  and  so  finely  that  the 
entr'acte  music  became  at  once  a  feature 
of  the  entertainment.  A  large  theater 
used  to  ring  nightly  with  the  performance 
of  fifteen  musicians  only  :  and   the  Lan- 


384 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES   READE. 


cashire  lads,  who  know  what  is  good, 
used  to  applaud  so  loudly  and  persist- 
ently that  Mr.  Ellis  had  to  rise  nightly 
in  the  orchestra  and  bow  to  them  before 
the  curtain  could  be  raised. 

Then  I  repeat  that  there  must  be  some- 
thing wrong  in  the  scale  of  remunera- 
tion, when  such  a  man  works  for  many 
years  and  dies  in  need,  without  improvi- 
dence. In  all  other  professions  there  are 
low  rewards  and  high  rewards.  On  what 
false  principles  does  such  a  man  as  Ellis 
receive  the  same  pittance  as  a  mediocre 
leader,  who  doses  a  play  with  tremolo, 
and  "hurries,"  and  plays  you  dead  with 
polkas  between  the  acts,  and,  though 
playing  to  a  British  audience  rarely 
plays  a  British  melody  bu1  to  destroy 
it  by  wrong  time,  wrong  rhythm,  coarse 
and  slovenly  misinterpretation,  plowing 
immortal  airs,  not  playing  t  hem  ? 

I  respectfully  invite  the  Press  over  this 
sad  grave,  to  look  into  these  matters — 
to  adopt  the  habit  of  decomposing  all  the 
complex  effects  of  a  theater:  to  iirnore 
nobody,  neither  artist  nor  mechanic,  who 
affects  the  public  :  to  time  the  carpenters' 
delays  on  a  first  night  and  report  them 
to  a  second:  to  lime  the  author's  lines 
and  report  their  time  to  a  minute;  to 
criticise  as  an  essential  part  of  tin'  per- 
formance the  music,  appropriate  or  in- 
appropriate, intelligent  or  brainless,  thai 
accompanies  the  lines  and  action: 
not  even  to  ignore  the  quality  and  execu- 
tion of  the  entr'acte  music.  A  thousand 
people  have  to  listen  to  it  three-quarters 
of  an  hour,  and  those  thousand  people 
ought  not  to  be  swindled  out  of  a  part  of 
their  money  by  the  misinterpretation  of 
Italian  overtures  or  by  the  everlasting 
performance  of  polkas  and  waltzes.  These 
last  are  good  musical  accompaniments  to 
the  foot,  but  to  seated  victims  they  are 
not  music,  but  mere  rhythmical  thumps. 
There  is  no  excuse  for  this  eternal  trash. 
since  the  stores  of  good  music  are  in- 
finite. 

If  the  Press  will  deign  to  take  a  hint 
from  me,  and  so  set  themselves  to  de- 
compose and  discriminate,  plays  will 
soon  be  played  quicker  on  a  first  night, 
and  accomplished  artists  like  Edwin  Ellis 


will  not  work  hard,  live  soberly,  and  die 
poor.  Meantime,  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
ask  the  public  to  repair  in  some  degree 
the  injustice  of  fortune.  Millions  of  peo- 
ple have  passed  happy  evenings  at  the 
Adelphi  Theater.  Thousands  have  heard 
Mr.  Ellis  accompany  "The  Wandering 
Heir"  and  between  the  acts  play  his 
"Songs  without  Music  "  at  the  Queen's. 
I  ask  them  to  believe  me  that  this  de- 
serving-ana unfortunate  musician  caused 
much  of  their  enjoyment  though  they 
were  not  conscious  of  it  at  the  time. 
Those  spectators,  ami  all  who  favor  me 
with  their  confidence  in  matters  of  char- 
ity, I  respectfully  invite  to  aid  the  Theat- 
rical and  Musical  Professions  in  the  efforl 
they  are  now-  making  to  save  from  dire 
destitution  the  widow  and  children  of 
that  accomplished  artist  and  worthy 
man. 

I  am,  sir, 

Yours  respectfully, 
Charles  Reade. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  BOAT  RACE 
OF  1872. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Observer." 

Tins  greal  annual  race  has  become  a 
national  event.  The  rival  crews  are 
watched  by  a  thousand  keen  eyes  from 
the  moment  they  appear  on  the  Thames; 
their  trials  against  time  or  scratch  crews 
are  noted  and  reported  to  the  world  : 
criticism  and  speculation  are  uninterniit- 
tent.  and  the  Press  prints  two  hundred 
volumes  about  the  race  before  ever  it 
is  run. 

When  the  day  comes  England  suspends 
her  liberties  for  an  hour  or  two.  makes 
her  police  her  legislators;  and  her  river, 
though  by  law  a  highway,  becomes  a  race 
course :  passengers  and  commerce  are 
both  swept  off  it  not  to  spoil  sacred 
sport ;   London  pours  out   her  myriads  • 


READIANA. 


385 


the  country  flows  in  to  meet  them ;  the 
roads  are  clogged  with  carriages  and 
pedestrians  all  making-  for  the  river  ;  its 
banks  on  both  sides  are  blackened  by  an 
unbroken  multitude  Ave  miles  long;  on 
all  the  bridges  that  command  the  race 
people  hang  and  cluster  like  swarming 
bees  :  windows,  seats,  balconies,  are 
crammed,  all  glowing  with  bright  col- 
ors (blue  predominating),  and  sparkling 
with  brighter  eyes  of  the  excited  fair 
ones. 

The  two  crews  battle  over  the  long- 
course  under  one  continuous  roar  of  a 
raging  multitude.  At  last — and  often 
after  fluctuations  in  the  race  that  drive 
the  crowd  all  but  mad — there  is  a  puff  of 
smoke,  a  loud  report,  one  boat  has  won, 
though  both  deserve  ;  and  the  victors  are 
the  true  kings  of  all  that  mighty  throng ; 
in  that  hour  the  Premier  of  England,  the 
Primate,  the  poet,  the  orator,  the  phi- 
losopher of  his  age,  would  walk  past  un- 
heeded if  the  Stroke  oar  of  the  victorious 
boat  stood  anywhere  near. 

To  cynics  and  sedentary  students  all 
this  seems  childish,  and  looks  like  pay- 
ing to  muscle  a  homage  that  is  never 
given  by  acclamation  to  genius  and 
virtue. 

But,  as  usual,  the  public  is  not  far 
wrong ;  the  triumph,  though  loud,  is 
evanescent,  and  much  has  been  done  and 
endured  to  earn  it.  No  glutton,  no  wine- 
bibber,  no  man  of  impure  life  could  live 
through  that  great  pull ;  each  victor 
abstinuit  venere  et  vino,  sudavit  et 
alsit. 

The  captain  of  the  winning  boat  has 
taught  Government  a  lesson;  for  in  select- 
ing his  men  he  takes  care  of  Honor,  and 
does  not  take  care  of  Dowb,  for  that 
would  be  to  throw  the  race  away  upon 
dry  land  ;  but  the  public  enthusiasm  rests 
on  broader  and  more  obvious  grounds 
than  these.  Every  nation  has  a  right  to 
admire  its  own  traits  in  individuals,  when 
those  traits  are  honorable  and  even  inno- 
cent. England  is  not  bound  to  admire 
those  athletes,  who  every  now  and  then 
proclaim  their  nationality  by  drinking  a 
quart  of  gin  right  off  for  a  wager ;  but 
we  are  a  nation  great  upon  the  water, 

Eeade— Vol.  IX. 


and  great  at  racing,  and  we  have  a  right 
to  admire  these  men,  who  combine  the 
two  things  to  perfection.  This  is  the 
king  of  races,  for  it  is  run  by  the  king  of 
animals  working,  after  his  kind,  by  com- 
bination, and  with  a  concert  so  strong, 
yet  delicate,  that  for  once  it  eclipses  ma- 
chinery. But,  above  all.  here  is  an  ex- 
ample, not  only  of  strength,  wind,  spirit, 
and  pluck  indomitable,  but  of  pure  and 
crystal  honor.  Foot  races  and  horse 
races  have  been  often  sold,  and  the  bet- 
tors betrayed  :  but  this  race  never — and 
it  never  will  be.  Here,  from  first  to  last, 
all  is  open,  because  all  is  fair  and  glorious 
as  the  kindred  daylight  it  courts.  We 
hear  of  shivering  stable  boys  sent  out  on 
a  frosty  morning  to  try  race-horses  on 
the  sly,  and  so  give  the  proprietors  pri- 
vate knowledge  to  use  in  betting.  Some- 
times these  early  worms  have  been  pre- 
ceded by  earlier  ones,  who  are  watching 
behind  a  hedge.  Then  shall  the  trainer 
whisper  one  of  the  boys  to  hold  in  the 
faster  horse,  and  so  enact  a  profitable 
lie.  Not  so  the  University  crews  ;  they 
make  trials  in  broad  daylight  for  their 
own  information  :  and  those  trials  are  al- 
ways faithful.  The  race  is  pure,  and  is 
a  strong  corrective  annually  administered 
to  the  malpractices  of  racing.  And  so 
our  two  great  fountains  of  learning  are 
one  fount  of  honor,  God  be  thanked  for 
it  !  So  the  people  do  well  to  roar  their 
applause,  and  every  nobleman  who  runs 
horses  may  be  proud  to  take  for  his  ex- 
ample these  high-spirited  gentlemen,  who 
nobly  run  a  nobler  creature,  for  they  run 
themselves.  The  recent  feature  of  this 
great  race  has  been  the  recovery  of  Cam- 
bridge in  1870  and  1871.  after  nine  suc- 
cessive defeats  ;  defeats  the  more  remark- 
able that  up  to  1861  Oxford  was  behind 
her  in  the  number  of  victories.  The  main 
cause  of  a  result  so  peculiar  was  that  sys- 
tem of  rowing  Oxford  had  invented  and 
perfected.  The  true  Oxford  stroke  is 
slow  in  the  water  but  swift  in  the  air ; 
the  rower  goes  well  forward,  drops  his 
oar  clean  into  the  water,  goes  well  back- 
ward, and  makes  his  stroke,  but,  this 
done,  comes  swiftly  forward  all  of  a  piece, 
hands  foremost.     Thus,   though   a   slow 

■13 


386 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


stroke,  it  is  a  very  bus\T  one.  Add  to  this 
a  clean  feather,  and  a  high  sweep  of  the 
oars  to  avoid  rough  water,  and  you  have 
the  true  Oxford  stroke,  which  is  simply 
the  perfection  of  rowing,  and  can.  of 
course,  be  defeated  by  superior  strength 
or  bottom  :  but.  cafiri.s  paribus,  is  al- 
most sure  to  win. 

Nine  defeats  were  endured  by  Cam- 
bridg'e  with  a  fortitude,  a  patience,  and  a 
temper  that  won  every  heart,  and  in  1870 
she  reaped  her  reward.     She    sent   up  a 

crew,  led  by  Mr.  Goldie — who  had    I n 

defeated  the  year  before  by  Darbishire's 
Oxford  eight — and  coached  by  Mr.  Mor- 
rison. This  Cambridge  crew  pulled  the 
Oxford  stroke  or  nearly,  drove  Oxford 
in  the  race  to  a  faster  stroke  that  does 
not  suit  her,  and  won  the  race  with  some- 
thing to  spa iv.  though  stuck  to  indomita- 
bly by  1  >arbishire  and  an  inferior  crew. 
In  1871  Oxford  sent  up  a  heavy  crew, 
with  plenty  of  apparent  strength,  but  not 
the  precision  and  form  of  Mr.  Goldie's 
eight.  Cambridge  took  the  lead  and 
kept   it. 

Tins  year  Oxford  was  ratlin-  unlucky 
in  advance.  The  city  was  circumnaviga- 
ble  by  little  ships,  and  you  mighl  have 
tacked  an  Indiaman  in  Magdalen  College 
meadow;  but  this  was  unfavorable  to 
eight-oar  practice.  Then  Mr.  Lesley,  the 
stroke,  sprained  his  side,  and  resigned  his 
post  to  Mr.  Houblon.  a  very  elegant  oars- 
man, hut  one  who  pulls  a  quick  stroke, 
not  healthy  to  Oxford  on  Fat  her  Thames 
his  bosom.  Then  their  boat  was  found 
to  he  not,  so  lively  as  the  Cambridge  boat 
built  by  Clasper.  A  new  boat  was  or- 
dered, and  she  proved  worse  in  another 
way  than  Salter's.  In  a  word  Oxford 
came  to  the  scratch  to-day  with  a  good 
stiff  boat,  not  lively,  with  twenty  pound 
more  dead  weight  inside  the  coxswain's 
jacket,  and  with  a  vast  deal  of  pluck  and 
not  a  little  Hemiplegia.  The  betting  was 
five  to  two  against  her. 

Five  minutes  before  the  rivals  came 
out  it  was  snowing  so  hard  that  the  race 
bade  fair  to  he  invisible.  I  shall  not  de- 
scribe the  snow,  nor  any  of  the  atmos- 
pheric horrors  that  made  the  whole  busi- 
ness purgatory  instead   of   pleasure.      I 


take  a  milder  revenge ;  I  only  curse 
them. 

Putney  roared  ;  and  out  came  the  Dark 
Blue  crew  ;  they  looked  strong  and  wiry, 
and  likely  to  be  troublesome  attendants. 
Another  roar,  and  out  came  the  Light 
Line.  So  long  as  the  boats  were  station- 
ary one  looked  as  likely  as  the  other  to 
win. 

They  started.  Houblon  took  it  rather 
easy  at  first  :  and  Cambridge  obtained 
a  lead  directly,  and  at  the  Soap  Works 
was  half  a  length  ahead.  This  was  re- 
duced by  Mr.  Hall's  excellent  steering  a 
foot  or  two  by  the  tune  they  shot  Ham- 
mersmith Bridge.  As  the  boats  neared 
Chiswick  Eyot,  where  many  a  race  has 
changed,  Oxford  gradually  reduced  the 
lead  to  a  foot  or  two;  and  if  this  could 
have  been  done  with  the  old.  steady, 
much-enduring  stroke,  1  would  not  have 
given  much  for  the  leading  boat's  chance. 
I'.;i!  it  was  achieved  by  a  stroke  of  full 
thirty-nine  to  the  minute,  and  neither 
form  nor  time  was  perfect.  Mr.  Goldie 
now  called  upon  Ins  crew,  and  the  Clasper 
heat  showed  greal  qualities;  it  shot  away 
visibly,  like  a  horse  suddenly  spurred: 
tins  spurt  proved  that  Cambridge  had 
greal  reserves  of  force,  and  Oxford  had 
very  little.  Houblonand  hisgallanl  men 
struggled  nobly  and  unflinchingly  on; 
hut .  bet  ween  Larncs  Bridge  and  Moil  lake, 
Goldie  pu1  the  steam  on  again,  and  in- 
creased the  lead  to  about  a  length  and  a 
half  clear  water.  The  gun  was  fired,  and 
Cambridge  won  the  race  of  1872. 

In  this  race  Oxford,  contrary  to  her 
best  tradil  ions,  pulled  a  faster  st  roke  than 
Cambridge:  the  Oxford  coxswain's  ex- 
perience compensated  for  his  greater 
weight.  The  lighter  coxswain  steered  his 
boat  in  and  out  a  bit,  and  will  run  some 
risk  of  being  severely  criticised  by  all  our 
great  contemporaries — except  Zig-Zag. 
As  for  me,  my  fifty  summers  or  fifty 
winters — there  is  no  great  difference  in 
this  island  of  the  blessed,  they  are  neither 
of  them  so  horrible  as  the  spring— have 
disinclined  me  to  thunder  on  the  young. 
A  veteran  journalist  perched  on  the  poop 
of  a  steam  vessel  has  many  advantages. 
He  has  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  Thames, 


READIANA. 


387 


and  can  steer  Clasper's  boat  with  his  mind 
far  more  easily  than  can  a  youngster 
squatted  four  inches  above  the  water, 
with  eight  giants  intercepting-  his  view  of 
a  strange  river,  and  a  mob  shouting  in  his 
ears  like  all  the  wild  beasts  of  a  thousand 
forests. 

Mr.  Goldie  has  done  all  his  work  well 
for  months.  He  chose  his  men  impartially, 
practiced  them  in  time,  and  Anally  rowed 
the  race  with  perfect  judgment,.  He  took 
an  experimental  time,  and  finding  he 
could  hold  it,  made  no  premature  call  upon 
his  crew.  He  held  the  race  in  hand,  and 
won  it  from  a  plucky  opponent  without 
distressing  his  men  needlessly.  No  man 
is  a  friend  of  Oxford,  who  tells  her  to 
overrate  accidents,  and  underrate  what 
may  be  done  by  a  wise  president  before 
ever  the  boats  reach  Putney.  This  Lon- 
don race  was  virtually  won  at  Cambridge. 
Next  year  let  Oxford  choose  her  men  from 
no  favorite  schools  or  colleges,  lay  aside 
her  prejudice  against  Clasper,  and  give 
him  a  trial  ;  at  all  events,  return  to  her 
swinging  stroke,  and  practice  till  not  only 
all  the  eight  bodies  go  like  one,  but  all  the 
eight  rowlocks  ring  like  one;  and  the 
spirit  and  bottom  that  enabled  her  to 
han£-  so  long  on  the  quarter  of  a  first-rate 
crew  in  a  first-rate  boat  will  be  apt  to 
land  her  a  winner  in  the  next  and  many  a 
hard-fought  race. 

Charles  Reade. 


BUILDERS'   BLUNDERS. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 


FIRST  LETTER. 

Sir — Amid  the  din  of  arms  abroad  and 
petty  politics  at  home,  have  you  a  corner 
for  a  subject  less  exciting,  but  very  im- 
portant to  Englishmen  ?  Then  let  me 
expose  that  great  blot  upon  the  English 


intellect,  the  thing  we  call  A  house,  es- 
pecially as  it  is  built  in  our  streets,  rows, 
and  squares. 

To  begin  at  the  bottom — the  drains  are 
inside  and  hidden ;  nobody  knows  their 
course.  A  foul  smell  arises  :  it  has  to  be 
groped  for,  and  half  the  kitchen  and  scul- 
lery floors  taken  up — blunder  1.  Drains 
ought  to  be  outside  :  and,  if  not,  their 
course  be  marked,  with  the  graving  tool, 
on  the  stones,  and  a  map  of  the  drains 
deposited  with  a  parish  officer  ;  overlying 
boards  and  stones  ought  to  be  hinged,  to 
facilitate  examination.  Things  capable 
of  derangement  should  never  be  inacces- 
sible. This  is  common  sense  ;  yet,  from 
their  drains  to  their  chimneypots,  the 
builders  defy  this  maxim. 

The  kitchen  windows  are  sashes,  and 
all  sash-windows  are  a  mistake.  They 
are  small ;  they  ought  to  be  as  large  as 
possible.  The  want  of  light  in  kitchens 
is  one  of  the  causes  why  female  servants 
— though  their  lot  is  a  singularly  happy 
one — are  singularly  irritable.  But,  not 
to  dwell  on  small  errors,  the  next  great 
blunder  in  the  kitchen  is  the  plaster 
ceiling. 

The  plaster  ceiling  may  pass,  with  Lon- 
don builders,  for  a  venerable  antiquity 
that  nothing  can  disturb,  but  to  scholars 
it  is  an  unhappy  novelty,  and,  in  its  pres- 
ent form,  inexcusable.  It  was  invented  in 
a  tawdry  age  as  a  vehicle  of  florid  orna- 
mentation ;  but  what  excuse  can  there  be 
for  a  plain  plaster  ceiling  ?  Count  the 
objections  to  it  in  a  kitchen.  1.  A  kitchen 
is  a  low  room,  and  the  ceiling  makes  it 
nine  inches  lower.  2.  White  is  a  glaring 
color,  and  a  white  ceiling  makes  a  low 
room  look  lower.  3.  This  kitchen  ceiling 
is  dirty  in  a  month's  wear,  and  filthy  in 
three  months,  with  the  smoke  of  gas,  and 
it  is  a  thing  the  servants  cannot  clean, 
-t.  You  cannot  hang  things  on  it. 

Now  change  all  this  :  lay  out  the  prime 
cost  of  the  ceiling,  and  a  small  part  of  its 
yearly  cost,  in  finishing  your  joists  and 
boards  to  receive  varnish,  and  in  varnish- 
ing them  with  three  coats  of  good  copal. 
Your  low  room  is  now  nine  inches  higher, 
and  looks  three  feet.  You  can  put  in 
hooks  and  staples  galore,  and  make  the 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


roof  of  this  business-room  useful ;  it  is,  in 
color,  a  pale  amber  at  starting-,  which  is 
better  for  the  human  eye  than  -white 
glare,  and,  instead  of  getting  uglier 
every  day,  as  the  plaster  ceiling  does, 
it  improves  every  month,  every  year. 
every  decade,  every  century.  Clean  deal, 
under  varnish,  acquires  in  a  few  years  a 
beauty  oak  can  never  attain  to.  So 
mach   for  the  kitchen. 

The  kitchen  stairs,  whether  of  stone  or 
wood,  ought  never  to  be  laid  down  with- 
out a  protecting  nozzle.  The  brass  noz- 
zle c>sts  some  money,  the  lead  nozzle 
hardly  any:  no  nozzle  can  be  dear:  for 
it  saves  the  steps,  and  they  are  dearer. 
See  how  the  kitchen  steps  are  cut  to 
pieces  for  want  of  thai  little  hit  of  fore- 
thought in  the  builder. 

We  are  now  on  the  lii-t  floor.  Over 
our  heads  is  a  blunder,  the  plaster  ceiling, 
well  begrimed  with  the  smoke  from  the 
gaselier,  and  not  cleanable  by  the  serv. 
ants:  and  we  stand  upon  another  blun- 
der: here  are  a   set  of   hoards,  not  joined 

together.      They    ace    nailed     down    loose, 

and  being  of  green  wood  they  gape  :  now 
the  blunder  immediately  below,  the  plas- 
ter ceiling  of  the  kitchen,  lias  provided 
a  receptacle  of  duM  several  inches  deep. 
This  rises  when  you  walk  upon  the  floor, 
rises  in  clouds  when  your  children  run  : 
and  that  dust  marks  your  carpet  in  black 
lines,  and  destroys  it  before  its  time. 
These  same  hoards  are  laid  down  without 
varnish;  by  this  means  they  rot.  and  do 
not  last  one-half.  nor.  indeed,  one-quar- 
ter, of  their  time.  Moreover,  the  unvar- 
nished hoards  get  filthy  at  the  sides  before 
you  furnish,  and  thus  you  lose  the  cleanest 
and  most  beautiful  border  possible  to  your 
carpet.  So  the  householder  is  driven  by 
the  incapacity  of  the  builder  to  pitiable 
substitutes  —  oil  cloth.  Indian  matting, 
and  stained  wood,  which  last  gets  uglier 
every  year,  whereas  deal  boards  varnished 
clean  improve  every  year,  every  decade, 
every  century. 

I  am,  sir. 

Yours  very  truly, 

Charles  Reade. 


SECOND    LETTER. 

Sir — "When  last  seen  I  was  standing  on 
the  first  floor  of  the  thing  they  call  a 
house,  with  a  blunder  under  my  feet — 
unvarnished,  unjoined  boards;  and  a 
blunder  over  my  head — the  oppressive, 
glaring,  plaster  ceiling,  full  of  its  in- 
evitable cracks,  and  foul  with  the  smoke 
of  only  three  months'  gas.  This  room 
has  square  doors  with  lintels.  Now  all 
doors  and  doorways  ought  to  he  arched, 
for  two  reasons — first,  the  arch  is  incom- 
bustible,  the  lintel  and  breast-summer 
are  combustible  :  secondly,  the  arch,  and 
arched  dm  r,  are  beautiful;  Hie  square 
hole  in  the  wall,  and  square  door,  are 
hideous. 

Sash  Windows. 

This  room  is  lighted  by  what  may  be 
defined  "the  unscientific  winflow."  Here 
in  this  single  structure  you  may  see  mosl 
of  the  intellectual  vices  that  mark  the 
unscientific  mind.     The  scientific  way  is 

ah\  :i\  s  t  he  simple  way  ;   so  here  you  have 

complication  on    complication:    one-half 

the  window  is  to  go  up.  the  other  half 
is  to  come  down.  The  maker  of  it  goes 
out  of  his  way  to  struggle  with  Nature's 
laws:  he  grapples  insanely  with  gravita- 
tion, and  therefore  he  must  use  cords, 
and  weights,  and  pulleys,  and  build  boxes 
to  hide  them  in— he  is  a  greal  bider.  His 
wooden  frames  moveupand  down  wooden 
grooves  open  to  atmospheric  influence. 
What  is  the  consequence  ?  The  atmos- 
phere becomes  humid  :  the  wooden  frame 
sticks  in  the  wooden  box,  and  the  un- 
scientific window  is  jammed.  What  ho  ! 
Send  for  the  curse  of  families,  the 
British  workman  !  Or  one  of  the  cords 
breaks  (they  are  always  breaking) — send 
for  the  curse  of  families  to  patch  the 
blunder  of  the  unscientific  builder. 

Now  turn  to  the  scientific  window;  it 
is  simply  a  glass  door  with  a  wooden 
frame  :  it  is  not  at  the  mercy  of  the 
atmosphere;  it  enters  into  no  contest 
with  gravitation:  it  is  the  one  rational 
window  upon  earth.  If  a  small  window, 
it  is  a  single  glass  door,  if  a  large 
window,    it    is    two    glass    doors,    each 


READIANA. 


389 


calmly  turning'  on  three  hinges,  and  not 
fighting  against  God  Almighty  and  His 
laws,  when  there  is  no  need. 

The  scientific  window  can  be  cleaned 
by  the  householder's  servants  without 
difficulty  or  danger,  not  so  the  unscien- 
tific window. 

How  many  a  poor  girl  has  owed  broken 
bones  to  the  sash-window  !  Nowadays 
humane  masters  afflicted  with  unscien- 
tific windows,  send  for  the  CURSE  OP 
families  whenever  their  windows  are 
dirty ;  but  this  costs  seven  or  eight 
pounds  a  year,  and  the  householder  is 
crushed  under  taxes  enough  without  hav- 
ing to  pa\r  this  odd  seven  pounds  per 
annum  for  the  nescience  of  the  builder. 

We  go  up  the  stairs — -between  two 
blunders :  the  balusters  are  painted, 
whereas  they  ought  to  be  made  and 
varnished  in  the  carpenter's  shop,  and 
then  put  up  ;  varnished  wood  improves 
with  time,  painted  deteriorates.  On  the 
other  side  is  the  domestic  calamity,  foul 
wear,  invariable,  yet  never  provided  for  : 
furniture  mounting  the  narrow  stairs 
dents  the  wall  and  scratches  it  ;  sloppy 
housemaids  paw  it  as  they  pass,  and 
their  dirty  gowns,  distended  by  crinoline, 
defile  it. 

What  is  to  be  done  then  ?  must  the 
whole  staircase  be  repainted  every  year, 
because  five  feet  of  it  get  dirty,  or  shall 
brains  step  in  and  protect  the  vulnerable 
part  ? 

The  cure  to  this  curse  is  chunam ;  or 
encaustic  tiles,  set  five  feet  high  all  up 
the  stairs.  That  costs  money  !  Granted  ; 
but  the  life  of  a  house  is  not  the  life  of  a 
butterfly.  Even  the  tiles  are  a  cheap 
cure,  for  repeated  paintings  of  the  whole 
surface  mighty  soon  balance  the  prime 
cost  of  the  tiles  set  over  a  small  part. 

The  water-closet  has  no  fire-place. 
That  is  a  blunder.  Every  year  we  have 
a  few  days'  hard  frost,  and  then,  without 
a  fire  in  the  water-closet,  the  water  in  the 
pan  freezes,  the  machinery  is  jammed, 
and  the  whole  family  endure  a  degree  of 
discomfort,  and  even  of  degradation,  be- 
cause the  builder  builds  in  summer  and 
forgets  there  is  such  a  thing  as  winter. 

The    drawing-room    presents    no    new 


feature ;  but  the  plaster  ceiling  is  par- 
ticularly objectionable  in  this  room,  be- 
cause it  is  under  the  bedrooms,  where 
water  is  used  freely.  Xow  if  a.  man  spills 
but  a  pint  of  water  in  washing  or  bath- 
ing, it  runs  through  directly  and  defiles 
the  drawing-room  ceiling.  Perhaps  this 
blunder  ought  to  be  equally  divided  be- 
tween the  ceiling  and  the  floor  above,  for 
whenever  bedroom  floors  shall  be  prop- 
erly constructed  they  will  admit  of 
buckets  of  water  being  sluiced  all  over 
them;  and,  indeed,  will  be  so  treated, 
and  washed  as  courageously  as  are 
sculleries  and  kitchens  only  under  the 
present  benighted  system. 

I  pass  over  the  third  floor,  and  mount  a 
wooden  staircase,  a  terrible  blunder  in 
this  pai*t  of  the  house,  to  the  rooms 
under  the  roof.  These  rooms,  if  the  roof 
was  open-timbered,  would  give  each  in- 
mate a  great  many  cubic  feet  of  air  to 
breathe ;  so  the  perverse  builder  erects  a 
plaster  ceiling,  and  reduces  him  to  a  very 
few  cubic  feet  of  air.  This,  the  maddest 
of  all  the  ceilings,  serves  two  characteris- 
tic purposes;  it  chokes  and  oppresses  the 
poor  devils  that  live  under  it,  and  it  hides 
the  roof :  now  the  roof  is  the  part  that 
oftenest  needs  repairs,  so  it  ought  to  be 
the  most  accessible  part  of  the  house, 
and  the  easiest  to  examine  from  the  out- 
side and  from  the  inside.  For  this  very 
reason  Perversity  in  person  hides  it ; 
whenever  your  roof  or  a  gutter  leaks,  it 
is  all  groping  and  speculation,  because 
your  builder  has  concealed  the  inside  of 
the  roof  with  that  wretched  ceiling,  and 
has  made  the  outside  accessible  only  to 
cats  and  sparrows,  and  the  "curse  of 
families."  N.  B. — Whenever  that  curse 
of  families  goes  out  on  that  roof  to 
mend  one  hole,  he  makes  two.  Why 
not  ?  thanks  to  the  perverse  builder,  you 
can't  watch  him,  and  he  has  got  a  friend 
a  plumber. 

We  now  rise  from  folly  to  lunacy  ;  the 
roof  is  half  perpendicular.  This,  in  a 
modern  house,  is  not  merely  silly,  it  is 
disgraceful  to  the  human  mind  ;  it  was 
all  very  well  before  gutters  and  pipes 
were  invented :  it  was  well  designed  to 
shoot  off  the  water  by  the  overlapping 


390 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


eaves  :  but  now  we  run  our  water  off  by 
our  gutters  and  pipes,  and  the  roof  mere- 
ly feeds  them ;  the  steep  roof  feeds  them 
too  fast  and  is  a  main  cause  of  overflows. 
But  there  are  many  other  objections  to 
slanted  roofs,  especially  in  streets  and 
ro  Iv  s : 

1st.  The  pyramidal  roof,  by  blocking 
up  the  air,  necessitates  high  stacks  of 
chimneys,  which  are  expensive  and 
dangerous, 

2d.  The  pyramidal  roof  presses  later- 
alls-  againsl  the  walls,  which  llicse  pre- 
cious builders  make  thinner  the  higher 
they  raise  them,  and  subjects  the  whole 
st  rud  ure  to  danger. 

3d.  It  cobs  the  family  of  a  whole  floor, 
and  give- it  to  cats  and  sparrows.  I  say 
that  a  five-story  house  with  a  pyramidal 
roof  is  a  five-story  house,  and  with  a  flat 
roof  is  a  six  story  house. 

41b.  It  robs  the  poor  cockney  of  his 
country  view.  It  is  astonishing  how 
much  of    the    country  can   be  seen  from 

the   roofs   of    si    London   streets.     A 

pool'  fellow  who  works  all  day  in  a  bole, 
might  smoke  his  evening  pipe,  and  sec  a 
wide  trad  of  verdure — but  the  builders 
have  denied  lii iii  that;  they  build  the 
roofs  for  cats,  and  il curse  of  fami- 
lies," they  do  not  build  it  for  the  man 
whose  bread  they  eat. 

5th.  It  robs  poor  families  of  their  dry- 
ing-ground. 

6th.  This  idiotic  blunder,  slightly  aided 
by  a  subsidiary  blunder  or  two,  murders 
householders  and  their  families  wholesale. 
destroys  them  by  the  most  terrible  of  all 
deaths — burning  alive. 

And  I  seriously  ask  you.  and  any  mem- 
ber of  either  House,  who  is  not  besot  ted 
with  little  noisy  things,  to  consider  how 
greal  a  mat  tec  this  is.  though  no  politi- 
cal squabble  can  be  raised  about  it. 

Mind  yon.  the  builders  are  not  to  blame 
that  a  small,  high  house  is,  in  its  nature, 
a  fire  trap.  This  is  a  misfortune  insepa- 
rable from  the  shape  of  the  structure  and 
the  nature  of  that  terrible  element.  The 
crime  of  the  builders  lies  in  this,  that 
they  make  no  intelligent  provision 
against  a  danger  so  evident,  but  side 
with  the  fire,  not  the  familv. 


Prejudice  and  habitual  idiocy  apart, 
can  anything  be  clearer  than  this,  that, 
as  fire  mounts  and  smoke  stifles,  all  per- 
sons who  are  above  a  fire  ought  to  be 
enabled  to  leave  the  house  by  way  of  the 
roof,  as  easily  and  rapidly  as  those  be- 
low /In-  fire  can.  go  out  by  the  street 
door. 

Now  what  do  the  builders  do  ?  They 
side  with  fire:  they  accumulate  combus- 
tible materials  on  the  upper  floors,  and 
they  construct  a  steep  roof  most  difficull 
and  dangerous  to  gel  about  on,  but  to 
the  aged  and  infirm  impossible.  Are  then 
the  aged  and  infirm  incombustible?  This 
horrible  dangerous  roof  the  merciless 
wretches  make  so  hard  of  access  that 
few  are  the  cases,  as  well  they  know  by 
the  papers,  in  which  a  life  is  saved  by 
their  hard  road.  They  open  a  little  trap- 
door— horizontal,  of  course:  always  go 
against  God  Almighty  and  His  laws, 
when  you  can:  that  is  the  idiots"  creed. 
This  miserable  aperture,  scarcely  big 
enough  for  a  dog,  is  bolted  or  pad- 
locked. It  is  seven  feet  from  the 
ground.  Yet  the  builder  fixes  no  steps 
nor  stairs  to  it;  no,  get  at  it  how  you 
can. 

What  (diance  has  a  mixed  family  of 
escaping  by  this  hole  in  case  of  fire. 
Nobody  ever  goeg  on  that  beastly  pyra- 
mid except  in  case  of  lire :  ami  so  the 
bolt  is  almost  sure  to  be  rusty,  or  the 
I.  .\  mislaid,  or  the  steps  not  close;  and, 
even  if  the  poor  wretches  get  the  stops  to 
the  place,  and  heave  open  the  trap,  in 
spite  of  rust,  and  gravitation,  these  de- 
lays are  serious;  then  the  whole  family 
is  to  be  dragged  up  through  a  dog  hole, 
and  that  is  slow  work,  and  fire  is  swift 
and  smoke  is  stifling. 

A  thousand  poor  wretches  have  been 
clean  murdered  in  my  time  by  the  build- 
ers with  their  trap-door  and  their  pyra- 
midal roof.  Thousands  more  have  been 
destroyed,  as  far  as  the  builders  were 
concerned;  the  fire-men  and  fire-escape 
men  saved  them,  in  spite  of  the  builders, 
by  means  which  were  a  disgrace  to  the 
builders. 

But  in  my  next,  sir,  I  will  show  you 
that  in  a  row  of  houses   constructed  by 


READIANA. 


391 


brains  not  one  of  those  tragedies  could 
ever  have  taken  place. 
I  am,  sir. 

Yours  very  truly, 

Charles  Reade. 


THIRD  LETTER. 

Sir — It  is  a  sure  sign  a  man  is  not  an 
artist,  if,  instead  of  repairing-  his  defects, 
he  calls  in  an  intellectual  superior  to 
counteract  them.  The  fire-escape  is  cred- 
itable to  its  inventor,  but  disgraceful  to 
the  builders.  They  construct  a  fire-trap 
without  an  escape ;  and  so  their  fellow- 
citizens  are  to  cudgel  their  brains  and 
supply  the  builders'  want  of  intelligence 
and  humanity  by  an  invention  working 
from  the  street.  The  fire-escape  can 
after  all  save  but  a  few  of  the  builders' 
victims.  The  only  universal  fire-escape 
is — The  rational  roof. 

To  be  constructed  thus :  Light  iron 
staircases  from  the  third  floor  to  top  floor 
and  rational  roof.  Flat  roof,  or  roofs, 
metal  covered,  with  scarcely  perceptible 
fall  from  center.  Open  joists  and  iron 
girders,  the  latter  sufficiently  numerous 
to  keep  the  roof  from  falling  in,  even 
though  fire  should  gut  the  edifice.  An 
iron-lined  door,  surmounted  by  a  sky- 
light ;  iron  staircase  up  to  this  door, 
which  opens  rationally  on  to  the  rational 
roof.  Large  cistern  or  tank  on  roof  with 
a  force-pump  to  irrigate  the  roof  in  fire 
or  summer  heats.  Round  the  roof  iron 
rails  set  firm  in  balcony,  made  too  hard 
for  bairns  to  climb,  and  surmounted  by 
spikes.  Between  every  two  houses  a  par- 
tition gate  with  two  locks  and  keys  com- 
plete. Bell  under  cover  to  call  neighbor 
in  fire  or  other  emergency. 

Advantages  offered  by  "  the  rational 
roof  :" 

1.  High  chimney  stacks  not  needed. 

2.  Nine  smoking  chimneys  cured  out  of 
ten.  There  are  always  people  at  hand  to 
make  the  householder  believe  his  chimney 
smokes  by  some  fault  of  construction,  and 


so  they  gull  him  into  expenses,  and  his 
chimney  smokes  on — because  it  is  not 
thoroughly  swept.  Send  a  faithful  serv- 
ant on  to  the  rational  roof,  let  him  see  the 
chimney-sweep's  brush  at  the  top  of  every 
chimney  before  you  pay  a  shilling,  and 
good-by  smoking  chimneys.  Sweeps  are 
rogues,  and  the  irrational  roof  is  their 
shield  and  buckler. 

3.  The  rails  painted  chocolate  and  the 
spikes  gilt  would  mightily  improve  our 
gloomy  streets. 

4.  Stretch  clothes'  lines  from  spike  to 
spike,  and  there  is  a  drying-ground  for 
the  poor,  or  for  such  substantial  people 
as  are  sick  of  the  washerwomen  and  their 
villainy.  These  heartless  knaves  are 
now  rotting  fine  cambric  and  lace  with 
soda  and  chloride  of  lime,  though  borax 
is  nearly  as  detergent  and  injures  noth- 
ing. 

5.  A  playground  in  a  purer  air  for  chil- 
dred  that  cannot  get  to  the  parks.  There 
is  no  ceiling  to  crack  below. 

G.  In  summer  heats  a  blest  retreat.  Ir- 
rigate and  cool  from  the  cistern  :  then  set 
four  converging  poles,  stretch  over  these 
from  spike  to  spike  a  few  breadths  of  awn- 
ing; and  there  is  a  delightful  tent  and 
perhaps  a  country  view.  If  the  Star  and 
Garter  at  Richmond  had  possessed  such  a 
roof,  they  would  have  made  at  least  two 
thousand  a  year  upon  it,  and  perhaps 
have  saved  their  manager  from  a  terrible 
death. 

7.  On  each  roof  a  little  flagstaff  and 
streamer  to  light  the  gloom  with  sparks 
of  color,  and  tell  the  world  is  the  master  at 
home  or  not.  This  would  be  of  little  use 
now  ;  but,  when  once  the  rational  roof  be- 
comes common,  many  a  friend  could  learn 
from  his  own  roof  whether  a  friend  was 
at  home,  and  so  men's  eyes  might  save 
their  legs. 

8.  In  case  of  fire,  the  young  and  old 
would  walk  out  by  a  rational  door  on  to 
a  rational  roof,  and  ring  at  a  rational 
gate.  Then  their  neighbor  lets  them  on 
to  his  rational  roof,  and  they  are  safe. 
Meantime,  the  adult  males,  if  any,  have 
time  to  throw  wet  blankets  on  the  sky- 
light and  turn  the  water  on  to  the  roof. 
The  rational  roof,  after  saving  the  family 


392 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


which  its  predecessor  would  have  de- 
stroyed, now  proceeds  to  combat  the  fire. 
It  operates  as  an  obstinate  cowl  over  the 
fire ;  and,  if  there  are  engines  on  the 
spot,  the  victory  is  certain.  Compare 
this  with  the  whole  conduct  of  the  irra- 
tional roof.  First  it  murdered  the  in- 
mates ;  then  it  fed  the  fire  ;  then  it  col- 
lapsed and  fell  on  the  ground  floor, 
destroying  more  property,  and  endan- 
gering the  firemen.    I  am. 

Yours  very  truly, 

Charles  Reade. 


FOURTH    LETTER. 

Sir — The  shoe  pinches  all  men  more  or 
less;  but,  on  a  calm  survey.  1  think  it 
pinches  the  householder  hardest. 

A  house  is  as  much  a  necessary  of  life 
as  a  loaf ;  yei  this  article  of  necessity  has 
been  lately  raised  to  a  fancy  price  by 
t  lie  I  rade  conspiraci  ss  of  I  tie  build 
eratives — nol  so  much  by  their  legitimate 
strikes  for  high  wages  as  by  their  con- 
spiring never  to  do  for  any  amount  of 
wages  an  honest  day's  work — and  the 
fancy  price  thus  created  strikes  the 
householder  first  in  the  form  of  rent. 
But  this  excessive  rent,  although  it  is  an 
outgoing,  is  taxed  as  income:  its  figure 
is  made  the  basis  of  all  the  imperial  and 
parochial  exactions,  that  crush  the  house- 
holder. One  of  i  hese  is  singularly  unfair  : 
I  mean  "the  inhabited  house  duty." 
What  is  this  but  the  property  tax  re- 
baptized  and  levied  over  again,  but  from 
the  wrong  person?  the  property  tax  is  a 
percentage  on  the  rent,  levied  in  good 
faith,  from  the  person  whom  the  rent  en- 
ables to  pay  that  percentage  :  but  the  in- 
habited house  duty  is  a  similar  percentage 
on  the  rent,  levied,  under  the  disguise  of 
another  name,  from  him  whom  the  rent 
disables. 

In  London  the  householder  constantly 
builds  and  improves  the  freehold  :  in- 
stantly parochial  spies  raise  his  rates. 
He  has  employed  labor,  and  so  far  coun- 


terbalanced pauperism ;  at  the  end  of 
his  lease  the  house  will  bear  a  heavier 
burden  ;  but  these  heartless  extortioners 
they  bleed  the  poor  wretch  directly  for 
improving  parochial  property  at  his  own 
expense.  At  the  end  of  his  lease  the 
rent  is  raised  by  the  landlord  on  account 
of  these  taxed  improvements,  and  the 
tenant  turned  out  with  a  heavier  griev- 
ance than  the  Irish  farmer;  yet  he  does 
not  tumble  his  landlord,  nor  even  a 
brace  of  vestrymen.  The  improving  ten- 
ant, while  awaiting  the  punishment  of 
virtue,  spends  twenty  times  as  much 
money  in  pipes  as  the  water  companies 
do,  yei  he  has  to  pay  them  for  water  a 
price  so  enormous,  that  they  ought  to 
bring  it  into  his  cisterns,  and  indeed  into 
his  mouth,  for  1  he  money. 

lie  pays  through  the  nose  for  gas. 

lie  Meeds  ftic  1  he  vices  of  the  working 
classes  :   since  in    our  we  s,  nine- 

tenths  of  the  pauperism  is  simply  waste 
and  inebriety.  Be  often  pays  temporary 
o  an  improvident  workman,  whose 
annual    income  exceeds    his  own.  but   who 

will  never  put  by  a  shilling  for  a  slack 
time. 

In  short .  the  respei  table  householder  of 
moderate  means  is  so  ground  down  and 
oppressed  that,  to  my  knowledge,  he  is 
on  the  road  to  despondency  and.  ripening 
for  a  revolul  ion. 

Now,  I  can  hold  him  out  no  hope  of 
relief  from  existing  taxation;  but  his 
intolerable  burden  can  be  lightened  by 
other  means:  the  simplest  is  to  keep 
down  his  bill  lor  repairs  and  decorations, 
which  at  present  is  made  monstrous  by 
original  misconstruction. 

The  irrational  house  is  an  animal  with 

ITS   MOUTH   ALWAYS   OPEN. 

This  need  not  be.  It  arises  from  causes 
most  of  which  are  removable;  viz.,  1st, 
from  unscientific  construction;  2d,  plas- 
ter ceilings;  3d,  the  want  of  provision 
for  partial  wear  ;  4th,  the  abuse  of  paint ; 
5th.  hidden  work. 

Under  all  these  heads  I  have  alread3' 
given  examples.  I  will  add  another  un- 
der head  3.  The  dado  or  skirting  board 
i-  to  keep  furniture  from  marking  the 
wall;  but  it  is  laid  down  only  one  inch 


READIANA. 


393 


thick,  whereas  the  top  of  a  modern  chair 
overlaps  the  bottom  an  inch  and  a  half. 
This  the  builders  do  not,  or  will  not,  ob- 
serve, and  so  every  year  in  London  fifty 
thousand  rooms  are  spoiled  by  the  marks 
of  chair-backs  on  the  walls,  and  the 
owners  driven  to  the  expense  of  paint- 
ing or  papering-  sixty  square  yards, 
to  clear  a  space  that  is  less  than  a 
square  foot,  but  fatal  to  the  appearance 
of  the  room. 

Under  head  4 let  me  observe  that  God's 
woods  are  all  very  beautiful ;  that  only 

FOOLS  ARE  WISER  THAN   GOD   ALMIGHTY  ; 

that  varnish  shows  up  the  beauty  of  those 
woods,  and  adds  a  gloss  ;  and  that  house- 
paint  hides  their  beauty.  Paint  holds 
dirt,  and  does  not  wash  well  :  varnish 
does.  Paint  can  only  be  mixed  by  a  work- 
man. Varnish  is  sold  fit  to  put  on.  Paint 
soon  requires  revival,  and  the  old  paint 
must  be  rubbed  off  at  a  great  expense, 
and  two  new  coats  put  on.  Varnish 
stands  good  for  years,  and,  when  it  re- 
quires revival,  little  more  is  necessary 
than  simple  cleaning,  and  one  fresh  coat, 
which  a  servant  or  anybody  can  lay  on. 
5.  Hidden  work  is  sure  to  be  bad  work, 
and  so  need  repairs,  especially  in  a  roof, 
that  sore  tried  part;  and  the  repairs  are 
the  more  expensive  that  the  weak  place 
has  to  be  groped  for. 

I  have  now,  I  trust,  said  enough  to 
awaken  a  few  householders  from  the 
lethargy  of  despair,  and  to  set  them 
thinking  a  little  and  organizing  a  defense 
against  the  extraordinary  mixture  of  stu- 
pidity and  low  instinctive  trade  cunning 
of  which  they  are  the  victims  :  for  a  gen- 
tleman's blunders  hurt  himself,  but  a. 
tradesman's  blunders  always  hurt  lus 
customers  ;  and  this  is  singularlj'  true 
of  builders'  blunders  ;  they  all  tend  one 
way — to  compel  the  householder  to  be 
always  sending  for  the  builder,  or  that 
bungling  rascal  the  plumber,  to  grope 
for  his  hidden  work,  or  botch  his  bad 
work,  or  clean  his  unscientific  windows, 
or  whitewash  his  idiotic  ceilings,  or  rub 
his  nastj'  unguents  off  God's  beautiful 
wood,  and  then  put  some  more  nasty  odo- 
riferous unguents  on,  or  put  cowls  on  his 
ill-cleaned  chimneys;  or,  in  short,  to  repair 


his  own  countless  blunders  at  the  expense 
of  his  customer. 

Independently  of  the  murderous  and 
constant  expense,  the  bare  entrance  into 
a  modest  household  of  that  loose,  lazy, 
drunken,  dishonest  drink-man  and  jack- 
man,  who  has  the  impudence  to  call  him- 
self "the  British  workman,"  though  he 
never  did  half  a  clay's  real  work  at  a 
stretch. in  all  his  life,  is  a  serious  calam- 
ity, to  be  averted  by  every  lawful  means. 
I  am,  sir, 

Yours  faithfully. 

Charles  Reade. 


OUR    DARK    PLACES. 


To  the  Gentlemen  of  the  Press. 


No.  I. 


Gentlemen — On  Friday  last,  a  tale  was 
brought  to  me  that  a  sane  prisoner  had 
escaped  from  a  private  madhouse,  had  just 
baffled  an  attempt  to  recapture  him  by 
violent  entry  into  a  dwelling-house,  and 
was  now  hiding  in  the  suburbs. 

The  case  was  grave  :  the  motives  al- 
leged for  his  incarceration  were  sinister  ; 
but  the  interpreters  were  women,  and 
consecpiently  partisans,  and  some,  though 
not  all,  the  parties  concerned  on  the  other 
side  bear  a  fair  character.  Humanity 
said  "  look  into  the  case  !  "  Prudence 
said,  "look  at  it  on  both  sides."  I  in- 
sisted, therefore,  on  a  personal  interview 

with  Mr. .     This  was  conceded,  and 

we  spent  two  hours  together  :  all  which 
time  I  was  of  course  testing  his  mind  to 
the  best  of  my  ability. 

I  found  him  a  young  gentleman  of  a 
healthy  complexion,  manner  vif,  but  not 
what  one  would  call  excited.  I  noticed 
however  that  he  liked  to  fidget  string 
and  other  trifles  between  his  finger  and 
thumb  at  times.  He  told  me  his  history 
for  some  years  past,  specifying  the  dates 
of  several  events  :  he  also  let  me  know  he 


394 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


had  been  subject  for  two  years  to  fits, 
which  he  described  to  me  in  full.  I  recog- 
nized the  character  of  these  fits.  His 
conversation  was  sober  and  reasonable. 
But  had  I  touched  the  exciting-  theme  ? 
We  all  know  there  is  a  class  of  madmen 
who  are  sober  and  sensible  till  the  one 
false  chord  is  struck.  I  came  therefore 
to  that  delusion  which  was  the  original 
ground  of  \s  incarceration  ;  his  no- 
tion thai  certain  of  his  relations  are  keep- 
ing money  from  him  that  is  his  due. 

This  was  the  substance  of  his  hallucina- 
tion as  he  revealed  it  to  me.  His  father 
was  member  of  a  firm  with  his  uncle  and 
others.  Shortly  before  his  death  Ins 
father  made  a  will  leaving  him  certain 
personalties,  the  interesl  of  £5,000,  and, 
should  he  live  to  be  twenty-four,  the  prin- 
cipal of  ditto,  and  the  reversion,  after  his 
mother's  death,  of  another  considerable 
sum. 

Early  last  year  he  began  to  inquire  why 
the  principal  due  to  him  was  not  paid.  lhs 
uncle  then  told  him  there  were  no  assets 
to  his  father's  credit,  and  never  had  been. 
( )n  this,  he  admit  s,  he  wrote  "  abomi- 
nably passionate"  letters,  and  demanded 
to  inspect  the  books.  This  was  refused 
him,  but  a  balance  sheet  was  sent  him, 
which  was  no  evidence  to  his  mind,  and 
did  not  bear  the  test  of  Addition,  being 
£40,000  out  on  the  evidence  of  its  own 
figures.  This  was  his  tale,  which  might 
be  all  bosh  for  aughl  I  could  tell. 

Not  being  clever  enough  to  distinguish 
truth  from  fancy  by  divination.  I  took  cab. 
and  olT  to  Doctors'  Commons,  determined 
to  bring  some  of  the  above  to  book. 

Well,  gentlemen,  I  found  the  will,  and 
I  discovered  thai  my  maniac  has  under- 
stated the  interest  lie  takes  under  it.  I 
also  find,  as  he  told  me  I  should,  his 
uncle's  name  down  as  one  of  the  wit- 
nesses to  the  will.  Item,  I  made  a  little 
private  discovery  of  my  own.  viz.,  that 

is  residuary  legatee,  subject  to  his 

mother's  life  interest,  and  that  all  his 
interest  under  the  will  q-oes  to  five  rela- 
tions of  the  generation  above  him  should 
he  die  intestate. 

I  now  came  to  this  conclusion,  which  I 
think  you  will  share  with  me,  that "s 


delusion  may  or  may  not  be  an  error,  but 
cannot  be  a  hallucination,  since  it  is  sim- 
ply good  logic  founded  on  attested  facts. 
For  on  which  side  lies  the  balance  of  cred- 
ibility ?  The  father  makes  a  solemn 
statement  that  he  lias  thousands  of 
pounds  to  bequeath.  The  uncle  assents 
in  writing  while  the  father  is  alive,  but 
gives  the  father  and  himself  the  lie  when 
the  father  is  no  longer  on  earth  to  contra- 
dict him.  They  say  in  law.  "Allegans 
contraria  mm  est  audiendus." 

Being  now  satisfied  that  the  soi-disant 
delusion  mighl  be  error  but  could  not  be 
alienation  of  judgment,  I  subjected  him 
to  a  new  class  of  proofs.  I  asked  him  if 
he  would  face  medical  men  of  real  emi- 
iience.  and  not  in  league  villi  madhouse 
doctors.  ••He  would  with  pleasure.  It 
was  his  desire."  We  went  first  to  Dr. 
Dicks,, ii.  who  has  great  experience,  and 
has  effected  some  remarkable  cures  of 
mania.  Dr.  Dickson,  as  may  well  be  sup- 
posed, did  not  take  as  many  seconds  as  I 
had  taken  hours.  lie  laughed  to  scorn 
the  very  notion  that  the  man  was  mad. 
"He  is  as  sane  as  we  are."  said  Dr. 
Dickson.  From  Bolton  Street  we  all 
three  go  to  Dr.  Ruttledge,  Hanover 
Square,  and.  on  the  road,  Dr.  Dickson 
and  I  agree  to  applj  a  test  to  Dr.  Rut- 
tledge,  which  it  would  have  been  on 
many  accounts  unwise  to  apply  to  a  man 
of  ordinary  skill.  Dr.  Dickson  intro- 
duced   and  me  thus : — " One  of  these 

is  insane,  said  to  be.  Which  is  it  ?  " 
Dr.  Ruttledge  took  the  problem  mighty 
coolly,  sat  down  by  me  first,  with  an  eye 
like  a  diamond  :  it  went  slap  into  my 
marrow-bone.  Asked  me  catching  ques- 
tions,  touched  my  wrist,  saw  my  tongue, 
and    said    quietly,   "This   one   is   sane." 

Then   he  went    and  sal  down   by and 

drove  an  eye  into  him,  asked  him  catch- 
ing questions,  made  him  tell  him  in  order 
all  he  had  done  since  seven  o'clock,  felt 
pulse,  saw  tongue :  "  This  one  is  sane, 
too."  Dr.  Dickson  then  left  the  room, 
after  telling  him  what  was 's  sup- 
posed delusion,  and  begged  him  to  ex- 
amine him  upon  it.  The  examination 
lasted  nearly  half  an  hour,  during  which 
related  the  circumstances  of  his  mis- 


BE  A  DIANA. 


395 


understanding,  his  capture,  and  his  es- 
cape, with  some  minuteness.  The  result 
of  all  this  was  a  certificate  of  sanity  ; 
copy  of  which  I  subjoin.  The  original 
can  be  seen  at  my  house  by  any  lady  or 
gentleman  connected  with  literature  or 
the  press. 

"  We  hereb}7  certify  that  we  have  this 
day,  both  conjointly  and  separately,  ex- 
amined Mr. ,  and  we  find  him  to  be  in 

every  respect  of  sound  mind,  and  labor- 
ing under  no  delusion  whatever.  More- 
over, we  entertain  a  very  strong  opinion 

that  the  said  Mr. has  at  no  period  of 

his  life  labored  under  insanity. 

"  He  has  occasionally  had  epileptic  fits. 

'•  (Signed)    James  Ruttledge.  M.D. 

S.  Dickson,  M.D. 

"  19  George  Street.  Hanover  Square, 
9tk  August,  1858. 

This  man,  whose  word  I  have  no  reason 
to  doubt,  says  the  keeper  of  the  mad- 
house told  him  he  should  never  go  out  of 
it.  This,  if  true,  implies  the  absence  of 
all  intention  to  cure  him.  He  was  a  cus- 
tomer, not  a  patient  :  he  was  not  in  a 
hospital,  but  in  a  jail,  condemned  to  im- 
prisonment for  life,  a  sentence  so  awful 
that  no  English  judge  has  ever  yet  had 
the  heart  to  pronounce  it  upon  a  felon. 
is  an  orphan. 

The  law  is  too  silly,  and  one-sided, 
and  slow,  to  protect  him  against  the 
prompt  and  daring  men  who  are  now 
even  hunting  him.  But  while  those 
friends  the  God  of  the  fatherless  has 
raised  him  concert  his  defense,  you  can 
aid  justice  greatly  by  letting  daylight  in. 
I  will  explain  why  this  is  in  my  next. 
I  am,  gentlemen, 

Your  obedient  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 

Garrick  Club, 

\0th  August,  1858. 


No.  II. 


Gextlemex— In  England  "Justice  "  is 
the  daughter  of  "Publicity."  In  this,  as 
in  every  other  nation,  deeds  of  villainy 
are   done  every  day  in  kid   gloves ;  but 


they  can  only  be  done  on  the  sly  :  here 
lies  our  true  moral  eminence  as  a  nation. 
Our  judges  are  an  honor  to  Europe,  not 
because  Nature  has  cut  them  out  of  a 
different  stuff  from  Italian  judges  :  this  is 
the  dream  of  babies  :  it  is  because  they  sit 
in  courts  open  to  the  public,  and  "'  sit  next 
day  in  the  neicspapers."  *  Legislators 
who  have  not  the  brains  to  appreciate  the 
Public,  and  put  its  sense  of  justice  to  a 
statesmanlike  use,  have  yet  an  instinctive 
feeling  that  it  is  the  great  safeguard  of 
the  citizen.  Bring  your  understandings 
to  bear  on  the  following  sets  of  proposi- 
tions in  lunacy  law  : — First  grand  divis- 
ion— Maxims  laid  down  by  Shelf ord.  "'a. 
The  law  requires  satisfactory  evidence 
of  insanity.  B.  Insanity  in  the  eye  of  the 
law  is  nothing  less  than  the  prolonged 
departure,  without  an  adequate  external 
cause,  from  the  state  of  feeling,  and 
modes  of  thinking,  usual  to  the  indi- 
vidual when  in  health,  c.  The  burden 
of  proof  of  insanity  lies  on  those  assert- 
xng  its  existence.  D.  Control  over  per- 
sons represented  as  insane  is  not  to  be 
assumed  without  necessity,  e.  Of  all 
evidence,  that  of  medical  men  ought  to 
be  given  with  the  greatest  care,  and  re- 
ceived with  the  utmost  caution.  F.  The 
medical  man's  evidence  should  not  merely 
pronounce  the  party  insane,  but  give  suf- 
ficient reasons  for  thinking  so.  For  this 
purpose  it  behooves  him  to  have  investi- 
gated accurately  the  collateral  circum- 
stances. G.  The  imputations  of  friends 
or  relations,  etc.,  are  not  entitled  to  any 
weight  or  consideration  in  inquiries  of 
this  nature,  but  ought  to  be  dismissed 
from  the  minds  of  the  judge  and  jury, 
who  are  bound  to  form  their  conclusions 
from  impartial  evidence  of  facts,  and  not 
to  be  led  astray  by  any  such  fertile 
sources  of  error  and  injustice." 

The  second  class  of  propositions  is  well 
known  to  your  readers.  A  relative  has 
only  to  buy  two  doctors,  two  surgeons, 
or  even  two  of  those  "whose  poverty 
though  not  their  will  consents."  and  he 
can  clap  in  a  madhouse  any  rich  old  fel- 

*  We  are  indebted  to  Lord  Mansfield  for  this 
phrase. 


396 


WORKS    OF    CHARLES  READE. 


low  that  is  spending  his  money  absurdly 
on  himself,  instead  of  keeping'  it  like  a 
wise  man  for  his  heirs  :  or  lie  can  lock  up 
any  eccentric,  bodily-afflicted,  trouble- 
some, account-sifting'  young-  fellow. 

In  other  words,  the  two  classes  of  peo- 
ple, who  figure  as  suspected  witnesses  in 
one  set  of  clauses,  are  made  judge,  jury, 
and  executioner,  in  another  set  of  clauses, 
one  of  which,  by  a  refinement  of  injustice, 
shifts  the  burden  of  proof  from  the  ac- 
cusers to  the  accused  in  all  open  proceed- 
ings subsequent  to  his  wrongful  imprison- 
ment.— Shelford,  56. 

Now  what  is  the  clew  to  this  apparent 
contradiction  —  to  this  change  in  the 
weather-cock  of  legislatorial  morality? 
It  is  mighty  simple.  The  maxims,  No.  1, 
are  the  practice  and  principle  thai  govern 
whal  are  called  "Commissions  <>f  Luna- 
cy.'" At  these  the  newspaper  reporters 
are  present.  No.  2  are  the  practice  and 
principle  legalized,  where  no  newspaper 
reporters  are  present.  Light  and  dark- 
ness. 

Since  then  the  Law  de  Lunatico  has 
herself  told  us  thai  she  is  an  idiol  and  a 
rascal  when  she  works  in  the  dark,  but 
that  she  is  wise,  cautious,  humane,  and 
honesl  in  the  light,  my  orphan  and  my- 
self should  indeed  be  mad  1o  disregard 
her  friendly  hinl  as  to  her  double  charac- 
ter. This,  gentlemen,  is  why  we  come  to 
you  firsl  :  you  must  give  us  publicity,  or 
refuse  us  justice.  We  will  go  to  the  Com- 
missioners in  Lunacy,  bul  not  before  their 
turn.  We  dare  not  abjure  experience. 
We  know  the  Commissioners:  we  know 
them  intus  et  in  cute  :  we  know  them  bet- 
ter than  they  know  themselves.  They 
are  of  two  kinds,  one  kind  I  shall  dissect 
elsewhere  ;  the  rest  are  small  men  afflicted 
with  a  common  malady,  a  commonplace 
conscience. 

These  soldiers  of  Xerxes  won't  do  their 
duty  if  they  can  help  it  ;  if  they  can't, 
they  will.  With  them  justice  depends  on 
Publicity,  and  Publicity  on  you.  Up  with 
the  lash  !  ! 

I  am  now  instructed  by  him  who  has 
been  called  mad.  but  whose  intelligence 
may  prove  a  match  for  theirs,  to  propose 
to  his  enemies  to  join  him  in  proving  to 


the  public  that  their  convictions  are  as 
sincere  as  his.  The  wording  of  the  chal- 
lenge being  left  to  me,  I  invite  them  to  an 
issue,  thus  :  ••  My  lads,  you  were  game  to 
enter  a  dwelling-house  kept  by  women. 
and  proposed  to  break  open  a  woman's 
chamber-door,  till  a  woman  standing  on 
the  other  side  with  a  cudgel,  threatened 
•to  split  your  skulls,"  and  that  chilled 
your  martial  ardor. 

Vosetenim  juvenes  animum  geritis  muliebrem 
Ilia  virago  viri. 

'•  And  now  you  are  wasting  your  money 
(and  you  will  want  il  a  11),  dressing  up 
policemen,  setting  spies,  and  in  short, 
doing  the  Venetian  business  in  England  ; 
and  all  forwhat?  You  want  our  orphan's 
body.  Well,  it  is  to  be  had  without  all 
this  dirty  maneuvering,  and  silly  small 
treachery.  Go  to  Jonathan  Weymouth, 
Esq.,  of  Clifford's  Inn.  He  is  our  or- 
phan's solicitor,  duly  appointed  and  in- 
structed :  he  will  accept  service  of  a  writ 
de  lunatico  inquirendo,  and  on  the  writ 
being  served,  Mr.  Weymouth  will  enter 
into  an  undertaking  with  you  to  produce 
the  body  of  E.  P.  P.  in  court,  to  abide 
the  issue  of  :i  daylighl  investigation.  If 
you  prove  trim  mad,  you  will  take  him 
away  with  you:  if  you  fad  to  make  him 
out  mad  before  a  disinterested  judge,  at 
all  events  you  will  prove  yourselves  to  be 
honest,  though  somewhat  bard-hearted, 
men  and  women." 

Should  tins  proposal  be  accepted,  the 
proceedings  of  our  opponents  will  then 
assume  a  respectability  that  is  wanting 
at  present,  and  in  that  case  these  letters 
will  cease.  Subjudice  lis  erit. 
I  am,  gentlemen. 

Your  obedient  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 


No.  III. 


Garkick  Club.  October. 

Gentlemen— My  last  letter  concluded 
by  inviting  the  person,  who  had  incarcer- 
ated my  orphan  on  the  plea  of  insanity, 
to  prove  that,  whether  mistaken  or  not, 
he  was  sincere.    No  such  evidence   has 


READIANA. 


39? 


been  offered.-  He  has  therefore  served  a 
writ  upon  this  person,  and  will  proceed  to 
trial  with  all  possible  expedition,  subject, 
of  course,  to  the  chances  of  demurrer,  or 
nonsuit.* 

It  would  not  be  proper  to  say  more, 
pendente  lite.  But,  some  shallow  com- 
ments having-  been  printed  elsewhere,  it 
seems  fair  that  those  Editors,  who  had 
the  humanity,  the  courtesy,  and,  let  me 
add,  the  intelligence,  to  print  my  letters, 
should  possess  this  proof  that  their 
columns  have  not  been  trifled  with  by 
Their  obliged 

And  obedient  servant, 

Charles  Reade. 


No.  IV. 


"Cunctando  restituit  rem." 

Gentlemen — When,  four  months  ago, 
I  placed  my  orphan  under  the  wing  of  the 
law,  I  hoped  I  had  secured  him  that  which 
is  every  Englishman's  right,  a  trial  by 
judge  and  jury  ;  and  need  draw  no  further 
upon  your  justice  and  your  pity.  I  have 
clung  to  this  hope  in  spite  of  much  sick- 
ness of  heart,  month  after  month  :  but  at 
last  both  hope  and  faith  are  crushed  in 
me,  and  I  am  forced  to  see,  that  without 
a  fresh  infusion  of  publicity,  my  orphan 
has  no  reasonable  hope  of  getting  a  public 
trial  till  he  shall  stand  with  his  opponents 
before  the  God  of  the  fatherless.  I  do 
not  say  this  merely  because  his  trial  has 
been  postponed,  and  postponed,  but  be- 
cause it  has  been  thrice  postponed  on 
grounds  that  can  be  reproduced  three 
hundred  times  just  as  easily  as  thrice, 
unless  the  light  of  publicity  is  let  in. 

Let  me  premise  that  the  matters  I  have 
to  relate  are  public  acts,  and  as  proper 
for  publication  and  criticism  as  any  other 
judicial  proceedings,  and  that  they  will 
make  the  tour  of  Europe  and  the  United 
States  in  due  course.     When  the  day  of 

*  Individually  I  entertain  no  apprehension  on 
this  score.  The  constitutional  rights  of  English- 
men are  safe  in  the  hands  of  the  present  judges  ; 
and  trial  by  jury,  in  a  case  of  this  character,  is 
one  of  those  lights — provided,  of  course,  the 
proper  Defendant  has  been  sued. 


trial  drew  near  in  November  last,  defend- 
ant's attornej'  applied  to  have  trial  post- 
poned for  a  month  or  two,  for  the  follow- 
ing sole  reason  : — He  swore,  first,  that  a 
Mr.  3  Stars,  dwelling  at  Bordeaux,  was  a 
witness  without  whom  defendant  could 
not  safelj-  proceed  to  trial ;  and  he  swore, 
second,  that  said  3  Stars  had  written  to 
him  on  the  18th  November,  that,  owing 
to  an  accident  on  the  railway,  he  was  then 
confined  to  his  room,  and  had  little  hope 
of  being  able  to  leave  Bordeaux  under  a 
month.  No.  1,  you  will  observe,  is  legal 
evidence  :  but  No.  2  is  no  approach  to- 
ward legal  evidence.  Nothing  is  here 
sworn  to  but  the  fact  that  there  exists  an 
unsworn  statement  by  a  Mr.  3  Stars.  On 
this  denii-semi-affidavit,  unsupported  by 
a  particle  of  legal  evidence,  a  well-mean- 
ing judge,  in  spite  of  a  stiff  remonstrance, 
postponed  the  trial,  nominally  for  one 
month,  really  for  two  months.  I  fear 
my  soul  is  not  so  candid  as  the  worthy 
judge's,  for  on  the  face  of  this  docu- 
ment, where  he  saw  veracity,  I  saw  dis- 
ingenuousness,  stand  out  in  alto  relievo. 
So  I  set  the  French  police  upon  Mr.  3 
Stars,  and  received  from  the  Prefect  of 
La  Gironde  an  official  document,  a  copy 
of  which  is  inclosed  herewith.  By  it  we 
learn,  first,  that  the  accident  or  incident 
was  not  what  plain  men  understand  by 
an  accident  on  a  railway.  The  man  hurt 
a  leg  getting  down  from  a  railway  car- 
riage, just  as  he  might  from  his  own  gig. 
Second,  that  it  was  not  quite  so  recent  as 
his  suppression  of  date  might  lead  a  plain 
man  to  presume,  but  was  three  weeks  old 
when  he  wrote  as  above  ;  third,  that  he 
must  have  been  well  long  before  the  9th 
of  December,  for,  writing  on  that  day, 
the  prefect  describes  him  as  having  made 
frequent  excursions  into  Medoc  since  his 
incident.  Unfair  inaccuracy  once  proved 
in  so  important  a  statement,  all  belief  is 
shaken.  In  all  human  probability.  Mr.  3 
Stars  was  convalescent  on  the  18th  Nov- 
ember, viz.,  three  weeks  after  his  railway 
incident.  But  it  is  certain  he  was  well 
on  or  about  the  1st  December,  and  that, 
consequently,  he  could  with  ease  have  at- 
tended that  trial,  which  his  statement 
that  he  could  not  move  till  about  the  18th 


398 


WORKS  OF    CHARLES  READE. 


December  caused  to  be  put  off  for  two 
months.  What  man  who  knows  the 
world  can  help  suspecting  that  the  arbi- 
trary period  of  a  month  was  arranged 
between  him  and  the  attorney,  not  so 
much  with  reference  to  the  truth  as  to 
the  sittings  of  the  court  at  Westminster 
upon  special  jury  cases  ? 

So  much  for  abjuring  the  experience  of 
centuries,  and  postponing  an  alleged  lun- 
atic's trial  for  two  months,  upon  indirect 
testimony  that  would  be  kicked  out  of  a 
County  Court,  in  a  suit  fora  wheelbarrow: 
hearsay  stuccoed,  nursery  evidence ;  not 
legal  evidence. 

Well,  gentlemen,  tin'  weary  months 
crawled  on,  and  the  lame,  old,  broken 
winded,  loitering  beldame,  British  jus- 
tice, hobbled  up  to  the  scratch  again  at 
last.  Sir.  3  Stars  was  now  in  England. 
That  sounded  well.     But  he  soon  showed 

Us  t  hat 

"  Cocluni    tioo  animani   mutant  qui  trans  mare 
currunt." 

His  health  still  fluctuated  to  order:  pret- 
ty well  as  to  the  wine  trade  ;  very  sick  as 
to   the    Courl    of   Queen's    Bench.      He 

comes    from     Bordeaux    to    London     (and 

that  is  a  good  step),  burning,  we  are 
told,  to  attend  the  trial  at  Westminster. 
The  trial  draws  near:  he  whips  off— to 
Hampstead  ?     No; — to    Wales,     Arrived 

there,    he    writes,    in    due    course,    to    his 

late  colleague  in  affidavit,  that  he  can't 
travel.  This  time  the  gentleman  that 
does  the  interlocutory  swearing  for  the 
defendant  (let  us  call  him  Fabius),  doubt- 
ing whether  the  li  Stars  malady  would  do 
again  by  itself,  associated  with  his  "ma- 
lade  affidavitaire  '"  two  ladies,  whom,  un- 
til they  compel  me  to  write  a  fifth  let- 
ter, I  will  call  Mrs.  Plausible  and  Mrs. 
Brand.  Non-legal  evidence  as  before. 
Fabius  swears,  not  that  3  Stars  is  ill; 
that  might  have  been  dangerous;  but 
that  3  Stars  says  he  is  ill :  which  is  t  rue. 
Item,  that  Mrs.  Brand  cannot  cross  the 
ditch  that  parts  France  from  England, 
because  she  has  had  an  operation  per- 
formed. This  turns  out  to  have  been 
twelve  monthsago.  Item,  Fabius  swears 
that  Mrs.  Plausible  says  the  little  Plausi- 
bles  have  all  got  scarlatina ;  and,  there- 


fore. Fabius  swears  that  Mrs.  Plausible 
thinks  the  constitutional  rights  of  the 
English  people  ought  to  remain  in  doubt 
and  suspense,  in  the  person  of  our  orphan, 
till  such  time  as  the  said  scarlatina  lias 
left  her  nursery  (and  the  measles  not  ar- 
rived ?),  "A  tout  bambin  tout  honueur." 
All  which  conjectural  oaths,  ami  sworn 
conjectures,  and  nursery  dialectics,  they 
took  to  Mr.  Justice  Erie,  of  all  gentlemen 
in  the  world  ;  and  moved  to  postpone  the 
trial  indefinitely.  Early  in  the  argument, 
their  counsel  having.  I  think,  gone 
through  the  schools  at  Oxford,  took  a 
distate  to  the  Irish  syllogism  that 
gleamed  on  his  brief;  videlicet,  no  wit- 
ness «ho  has  scarlatina  can  come  to 
Westminster  and  stand  cross-examina- 
tion by  Q.  C.  Little  b,  c.  and  d  are  not 
witnesses  but  have  got  scarlatina. 

ErgO,  capital  A  can't  COtlie  to  West- 
minster and  stand  cross-examination  by 
Q.  C. 

( '< sel  threw  over  Mis.  Plausible  and 

Hibernian  logic  generally,  ami  stood  on 
the  :'.  Stars  malady,  second  edition,  and 
the  surgical  operation  that  was  only 
twelve  months  old.  But  Mr.  Justice 
Erie  declined  to  postpone  human  justice 
till  sickness  and  shamming  should  lie  no 
more.  He  refused  to  ignore  t  he  plaint  iff, 
held  the  balance,  and  gave  them  a  just 
and  reasonable  delay,  to  enable  them  to 
examine  their  "malades  affida  vita  ires" 
upon  commission.  He  was  about  to  fix 
Saturday,  Jan.  .">.  for  the  trial.  They 
then  pleaded  hard  for  Monday.  This 
was  referred  to  plaintiff's  attorney, 
who  conceded  that  point.  Having 
accepted  this  favor,  which  was  clearly 
a  conditional  one.  anil  only  part  of 
the  whole  arrangement,  they  were,  I 
THINK,  bound  by  professional  good  faith 
not  to  disturb  the  compact.  They  held 
otherwise  :  they  instantly  set  to  work  to 
evade  Mr.  Justice  Erie's  order,  by  tinker- 
ing the  Irish  syllogism.  In  just,  the  time 
that  it  would  take  to  send  Mrs.  Plausible 
a  letter,  and  say  it  is  no  use  the  little 
Plausibles  having  scarlatina  ;  you  must 
have  it  yourself,  madam  ;  you  had  bet- 
ter have  it  by  telegraph — Mrs.  Plausible 
announces  the  desired   malady,  but  not 


READIANA. 


39'J 


upon  oath.  "Scarlatina  is  easily  said." 
II  va  sans  dire  que  they  don't  venture 
hefore  Mr.  Justice  Erie  again  with  their 
tinkered  affidavit.  They  slip  down  to 
Westminster,  and  surprise  a  fresh  judge, 
who  lias  had  no  opportunity  of  watching 
the  rise  and  progress  of  disease.  Their 
counsel  reads  the  soldered  affidavit. 
Plaintiff's  counter  affidavits  are  then  in- 
trusted to  him  to  read.  What  does  he 
do  ?  He  reads  the  preamble,  but  burks 
the  affidavits.  The  effect  was  inevitable. 
Even  bastard  affidavits  cannot  be  met  by 
rhetoric.  They  can  only  be  encountered 
by  affidavits.  Judges  decide,  not  on 
phrases,  but  on  the  facts  before  them. 
Plaintiff's  facts  being  silenced,  and  defend- 
ant's stated,  the  judg-e  naturally  went  de- 
fendant, and  postponed  the  trial.    (No.  3.) 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  am  the  last  man  in 
the  world  to  cry  over  spilled  milk.  I 
don't  come  to  you  to  tinker  the  untinker- 
able  past,  but,  for  the  future,  to  ask  a 
limit  to  injustice  in  its  worst  form,  trial 
refused. 

Without  your  help,  this  alleged  lunatic 
is  no  nearer  the  term  of  his  sufferings ; 
no  nearer  the  possibility  of  removing  that 
frightful  stigma,  which  is  not  stigma 
only,  but  starvation  ;  no  nearer  to  trial 
of  his  sanity  by  judge  and  jury,  than  he 
was  four  months  ago.  True,  there  are 
now  three  judges  who  will  not  easily  be 
induced  to  impede  the  course  of  justice  in 
this  case;  but  there  are  other  uninformed 
judg'es  who  may  be  surprised  into  doing 
it  general.  Fabius  can  at  any  day  of  any 
month  stvear  that  some  male  or  female 
witness  says  she  wants  to  come  into  the 
witness-box,  and  can't.  And  so  long  as 
"Jack  swears  that  Jill  says"  is  con- 
founded with  legal  evidence,  on  inter- 
locutory motions,  justice  can  be  defeated 
to  the  end  of  time,  under  color  of  post- 
ponement. Gentlemen,  it  is  a  known  fact 
•among-  lawyers  that,  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten,  postponement  of  trial  has  no  other 
real  object  but  evasion  of  trial  b}-  tiring 
out  the  plaintiff,  or  breaking  his  heart,  or 
ruining  him  in  expenses. 

I  see  little  reason  whatever  to  doubt 
that  this  is  a  principal  object  here.  De- 
fendants have  a  long  purse.     Plaintiff  is 


almost  a  pauper  in  fact,  whatever  he  may 
be  in  law.  Mr.  3  Stars,  sworn  to  as  an 
essential  witness,  has  not  seen  the  boy 
for  years.  How  can  he,  therefore,  be  a 
very  essential  witness  to  his  insanity  at 
or  about  the  period  of  his  capture  ?  Dr. 
Pillbox  and  Mr.  Sawbones  must  be  better 
cards  so  far  :  in  a.  suit  at  law  the  evidence 
of  insanity^,  like  that  of  sanity,  cannot  be 
spread  out  thin  over  disjointed  years,  like 
the  little  bit  of  butter  on  a  schoolboy's 
bread.  Mr.  3  Stars  may  be  an  evidence 
as  to  flg-ures  :  but  then  the  books  are  to 
be  in  court  subpoena, ;  and  nobody  listens 
much  to  any  of  us  swearing  arithmetic, 
when  a  ledger  is  speaking.  The  lady  I 
have  called  Mrs.  Plausible,  would  not,  in 
my  humble  opinion,  go  into  a  witness-box 
if  she  were  paid  a  hundred  pounds  a 
minute.  I  mean  this  anything  but  dis- 
courteously. 

I  implore  all  just  and  honest  men,  es- 
pecially those  who  are  in  the  service  of 
the  State,  to  try  and  realize  the  fright- 
ful situation  in  which  postponement  of 
trial  keeps  an  alleged  lunatic.  The  blood- 
hounds are  hunting  him  all  this  time. 
There  were  several  men  looking  after  him 
the  very  last  clay  he  lost  his  hopes  of  im- 
mediate trial.  Suppose  that,  on  unsub- 
stantial grounds,  and  illegal  evidence, 
time  should  be  afforded  to  find  him  out 
and  settle  the  questions  of  fact  and  law, 
by  brute  force,  what  complexion  would 
these  thoughtless  delays  of  justice  assume 
then  in  the  eye  of  the  nation  ;  ay,  and  to 
do  them  justice,  in  the  consciences  of 
those  whose  credulity  would  have  made 
the  bloodhounds  of  a  lunatic  asyium  mas- 
ters of  an  argument  that  lias  been  now 
for  many  months  referred  to  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  of  England  and  a  special 
jury.  Mind,  the  constitution  has  been 
tampered  with;  "habeas  corpus"  has 
been  suspended  by  the  boobies  that  framed 
the  Lunacy  Acts.  The  judges  have  power 
to  impede  justice,  but  none  to  impede  in- 
justice. In  these  peculiar  cases,  I  am 
advised,  they  can't  order  a  sane  man  out 
of  n  lunatic  asylum  into  the  witness-box. 
Justice  hobbles,  but  injustice  flies  to  its 
mark.  I  declnre  to  yrou  that  I  live  in 
mortal  terror  lest  some  evil  should  befall 


400 


iVORKS    OF    CHARLES    READE. 


this  man,  under  the  very  wing  of  the 
court — not  of  course  from  the  defendant — 
but  from  some  member  or  members  of  the 
gang  of  stupid  ruffians  I  am  assured  are 
still  hanging  about  the  skirts  of  the  de- 
fense; men  some  of  whom  have  both 
bloodshed  and  reasonshed  on  their  hands 
already.  My  verj  housemaids  have  been 
tampered  with  to  discover  where  ••the 
pursuer/'  as  the  Scotch  call  him.  is  hiding 
and  quaking.  Is  such  an  anomaly  to  I..' 
borne!-'  Is  a  man  to  be  a1  the  same  time 
run  from  with  affidavits  and  chased  with 
human  blood-hounds?  Is  this  a  slate  of 
things  to  be  prolonged,  without  making 
our  system  the  scorn  ami  laughing-stock 
of  all  the  citizens  and  law\  ers  of  Europe ': 

Fletcher  v.  Fletcher  only  wants  realiz- 
ing. But  some  people  are  so  stupid  they 
can  realize  nothing  that  they  have  not 
got  Ln  their  hands,  their  mouths,  or  their 
bellies.  This  is  no  common  case ;  uo  com- 
mon situation.  Tins  particular  English- 
man sues  not  merely  lor  damages,  but  to 
recover  lost  rights  dearer  tar  than  money, 
of  which  rights  \\e  says  he  is  unjust  ly 
robbed  ;  his  right,  to  walk  in  daylight  on 
the  soil  of  his  native  land,  without  being 
seized  and  chained  up  for  life  like  a  nigger 
or  a  dog  :  his  footing  in  society,  his  means 
of  earning  bread,  and  his  place  among 
mankind.  For  a  lunatic  is  a  beast  in  the 
law's  eye  and  society's;  and  an  alleged 
lunatic  is  a  lunatic  until  a  jury  pronounces 
him  sane. 

I  appeal  to  you.  gentlemen,  is  not  such 
a  suitor  sacred  in  all  good  men's  minds:-' 
Is  he  not  defendant  as  well  as  plaintiff? 
Why  his  stake  is  enormous  compared  with 
the  nominal  defendant's  ;  and,  if  I  know 
right  from  wrong,  to  postpone  his  trial  a 
fourth  time,  without  a  severe  necessity, 
would  be  to  insult  Divine  just  ice,  and  trifle 
with  human  misery,  and  shock  the  com- 
mon sense  of  nations.      I  am. 

Your  obedient  servant, 
Charles  Reade. 

With  this  a  copy  is  inclosed  of  the 
French  prefect's  letter,  and  other  creden- 


tials.     These  documents  are  abandoned 
to  your  discretion. 

Nothing  in  the  above  letter  is  to  be 
construed  as  assuming  that  the  defend- 
ant has  a  bad  case.  He  may  have  a 
much  better  one  than  the  plaintiff.  I 
am  not  asking  for  the  latter  a  verdict 
to  which  he  may  have  no  right:  but  a 
trial,  to  which  he  has  every  right. 

Bordeaux,  le  9  Decembre,  1858. 

Monsieur — En  reponse  a  la  lettre  que 
vous  m'avez  adressee,  a  la  date  du  26 
Novembre  dernier,  j'ai  1'bonneur  de  vous 
t  ransmet  t  re  les  renseignements  qui  m'ont 
etc''  fournis  sur  le  Sr  Cunliffe,  sujet  anglais. 

Le  S'  <  lunliffe  demeure  a  Bordeaux,  rue 
Cone,  43.  11  est  negotiant  en  vins  el 
par. hi  jouir  de  l'estime  des  personnes  qui 
le  connaissent. 

II  est  vrai  qu'un  accidenl  lui  est  arrive, 
il  y  a  mi  mois  ei  demi,  sur  le  chemin  de 
fer;  il  est  tombe  en  descendant  el  s'esl 
blesse  a  une  jambe  ;  par  suite  il  a  garde 
le  chambre  pendant  quelque  temps,  inais 
aujourd'hui  il  parail  etre  retabli ;  vaque 
a  ses  occupations  ordinaires  el  fail  m.h- 
vent  (les  excursions  dans  le  Medoc  a  fjuel- 
ques  lieues  de  Bordeaux. 

Recevez,  monsieur,  l'assurance  de  ma 
parfaite  considerat  ion, 

Le  Prefet  de  la  Grironde, 
(Signed) 
a  MONsnsi  R  (11  IRLES  RE  lDE. 

6  Bolton  Row,  JJavi-.uk.  Londres. 

In  spite  of  letter  four:  the  trial  was 
postponed   twice  more. 

At  last  it  came  and  is  reported  in  The 
Times  of  July  8,  1859.  The  court  was 
filled  with  low  repulsive  faces  of  mad- 
house attendants  and  keepers,  all  ready 
to  swear  the  man  was  insane.  He  was 
pul  into  the  witness-box,  examined  and 
cross-examined  eight  hours,  and  the  de- 
fendant succumbed  without  a  struggle. 
The  coming  damages  wen'  compounded 
for  an  annuity  of  £100  a  year.  £50  cash. 
and  the  costs. 

As  bearing  upon  this  subject,  my  let- 
ter to  the  Pall  JIall  Gazette  of  January  ' 
17,  1870,  entitled  "How  Lunatics'  Ribs 
get  Broken,"  should  be  read.  This  let- 
ter is  now  reprinted  at  the  beginning  of 
'•Hard  Cash." 


END    OF   VOLUME   NINE. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL     FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

W.LL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
?H,S  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
W.U.  >NCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  *I.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


AUG    14    1933 


•JAR  *9  Wi 


tfTD     JUL  1*« 


"inn «« inn  inn  inn  mil  mil  mil  ii  mil  mi  mi 
CD310Tflni 


MBMBWM| 


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